Re: By any other name... (Erik Larsen )


Subject: Re: By any other name...
From:    Erik Larsen  <elarsen@xxxxxxxx>
Date:    Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:13:25 -0400
List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>

To me it the effect becomes more interesting when you consider the contrast between filling in of gaps when interrupting noise is present vs. not filling in of gaps when there is interrupting silence. By adding noise, instead of silence, you haven't really given the brain any additional information to enable the filling in, but nonetheless the effect is there. It reminds me of the work by Freyman et al. where speech reception improves with the addition of advanced noise in a different spatial location (relative to the target speech and a spatially coincident noise masker), because of the precedence effect. The SNR as measured by a microphone goes down, yet human performance goes up. Although these two effects differ peripherally, I wonder if they can somehow be linked at a higher (cognitive?) level. Erik Bruno Repp wrote: > Thanks, Dan, Daniel, and Yoshitaka, for your excellent comments. I agree > with you, > of course, yet there is still something that bothers me. If it does not > really matter > whether a signal is present or absent, why do researchers make the > effort to > put a gap in the signal? Why not just mask a continuous signal instead? > If the masker is strong enough, it should not matter. However, the > finding of > perceived continuity will seem much LESS SURPRISING when the signal > was actually present than when it was absent. So, the actual > introduction of > a signal absence seems like a psychological trick on the part of the > investigator. > This does not apply, of course, in cases like the one described by > Yoshitaka, where > some percept is synthesized out of nothing, as it were. > --Bruno > > >> On 3/22/07, Bruno Repp <repp@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> If objective methods cannot prove the absence of the signal, >>> then I would argue that the signal is in fact present. Is an >>> objective proof of signal absence typically presented in studies of >>> the auditory continuity effect? >> >> I don't think the objective presence or absence is very interesting; >> there >> is a range of circumstances in which a more optimally configured >> detector might be able to detect the absence of a perceptually restored >> tone (although those circumstances may be surprisingly narrow). >> >> What is more interesting is that even in genuinely undecidable >> circumstances, >> when, as Yokashita puts it, the signal is objectively "either present >> or absent", >> the perceptual system does not report that ambiguity but instead >> returns a >> confident answer. Moreover, in the case of continuity, that answer is >> not the >> locally simplest answer (no spectral peaks = no perceived tones), but >> instead >> is the "simplest" answer on a much broader scale (continuous tone more >> likely >> than tone with a gap synchronized with noise burst). >> >> Maybe the objection is that *of course* the perceptual system will do the >> reasonable thing of assuming continuity when there is no >> counter-evidence. >> But the computational implementation of a system that can capture and >> apply this kind of definition of "reasonableness" is much more complex >> than >> a lay person might expect from the auditory system - and a majore >> challenge >> for those of us interested in modeling perceptual sound analysis. >> >>> If objective methods cannot prove the absence of the signal, >>> then I would argue that the signal is in fact present. >> >> This reminds me of the discussion we had a few years ago about the >> WW2 aircrews who could conjure up the illusory experience of listening >> to favorite pieces of music in among the earsplitting drone of the >> aircraft >> engines during long missions. Since no objective measure can distinguish >> the presence or absence of Beethoven's 5th at 20 dB below the air >> conditioning >> noise in my office, why am I not perceiving it (or only that one, and >> not the >> infinity of other unmeasurably-quiet signals that are also "present")? >> >> DAn. > > -- Erik Larsen PhD candidate Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology http://web.mit.edu/shbt "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"


This message came from the mail archive
http://www.auditory.org/postings/2007/
maintained by:
DAn Ellis <dpwe@ee.columbia.edu>
Electrical Engineering Dept., Columbia University