environmental non-noises

[Honbolygó Ferenc <hf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List members,

We are currently working on an experiment about the semantical 
processing of environmental noises. We are trying to do a similar task 
as the lexical decision task with words and nonwords, but with 
environmental noises and "non-noises". The problem is that we have a 
hard time creating non-noises which are quite environmental noise-like, 
but are not recognizable. We tried almost every distortion methods used 
in the literature (reversing, spectrally-rotating, scrambling the parts) 
but the sounds are always pretty much recognizable by most people.
Does anyone have any idea on how to create such non-recognizable 
non-noises based on existing environmental noises? Or is this idea just 
not feasible, because people will always think that what they heard is 
something real?
Thanks,
Ferenc Honbolygó

--
Ferenc Honbolygó

Research Institute for Psychology, HAS
Department of Psychophysiology
Research Group of Developmental Psychophysiology
H-1394 Budapest, P.O.Box 398.

Web: http://humlab.cogpsyphy.hu/
E-mail: hf@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel:     +361 354-2390
Fax:    +361 354-2416