Dear
list,
The
idea of ‘auditory volume’ seems to be related to this discussion.
Investigated mostly in the first decades of the 20th Century,
auditory volume is a subjective judgment of the ‘size’ of sound
– or more precisely, the size of the auditory image. That’s
different to the size of a sound source, but it may be related ‘ecologically’.
S.S. Stevens’ PhD thesis is about volume and loudness (Harvard 1933). The
general findings in the early years was that judgments of size were positively
correlated to sound pressure level, and negatively correlated to the frequency
(of pure tones). Later research investigated the perceived size of noise bands
(effect of bandwidth), the effect of duration, and the effect of interaural coherence.
Over
the past 40 or so years, the concept of auditory image size has come to be
considered important in auditorium acoustics and spatial audio. The most
investigated parameter in those fields has been the interaural cross
correlation function. However recent work by Russell Mason (in spatial audio)
and Ingo Witew (in auditorium acoustics) seems to show some connection to the
phenomena investigated in the auditory ‘volume’ literature.
You
can confirm the phenomenon of sound pressure level affecting auditory image
size by concealing a loudspeaker behind a curtain with a visual grid on it, and
for various stimuli asking subjects to identify the edges of the (apparent)
sound source. This is what we did some years ago in:
D.
Cabrera and S. Tilley (2003) "Parameters for auditory display of height
and size," 9th
International Conference on Auditory Display, Boston , USA
, 29-32. (available from www.icad.org). [By the way, if
anyone is interested in the other aspect of that paper – pitch-height vs
vertical localization, we have recently published on that: D. Cabrera and M.
Morimoto (2007) "Influence of fundamental frequency and source elevation
on the vertical localization of complex tones and complex tone pairs," Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, 122(1), 478-488.]
Densil Cabrera
Head, Acoustics Research Laboratory
Associate Dean (Research)
Faculty of Architecture, Design and
Planning
University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia
Tel. +612 9351 5267 Skype densilcabrera
Fax. +612 9351 3031 densil@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~densil/
On 17/09/2007, pieter jan stallen <pj.stallen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear List,
Does anyone know of
experimental psychological data reported which refutes (or not)
the hypothesis: the perception of object O as "has much of quality X" predisposes to the
perception also of "has much
of quality Y"? E.g., is there empirical evidence for cross-modal bonds
like "large objects (much of size) are loud objects (much of sound)"
?
Although I see brain
research approaching the subject (e.g. http://www.dhushara.com/pdf/synesthesia.pdf
) I have not (yet) found so much empirical psychology about
such metaphors. I may not have studied carefully enough the synaestesia
literature, but appreciate any more specific 'forwardings' then.
Pieter Jan Stallen /
Chair Community Noise Annoyance / University
of Leiden / Netherlands
--
Dr Jan Schnupp
University of Oxford
Dept. of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
Sherrington Building - Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PT - UK
+44-1865-272513
www.oxfordhearing.com
--
Dr. Bob Carlyon
MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit
15 Chaucer Rd.
Cambridge CB2 7EF
England
Phone: +44 1223 355294 ext 651
Fax: +44 1223 359062
www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk