Dear Massimo, As Bruce mentioned, I do have ‘Phantom Word’ demonstrations
on CD – one on my CD ‘Musical Illusions and Paradoxes” and six more on my CD
‘Phantom Words, and Other Curiosities” (see my “Phantom Words” page under
“Illusions and Research” in http://deutsch.ucsd.edu - this contains a description of the
phenomenon and also links to a number of sound examples). The listener sits in
front of two loudspeakers, with one to the left and the other to the right.
Each track contains two words, or a single word composed of two syllables, and
these are repeated over and over. The same sequence is presented through both
speakers, but the tracks are offset in time so that when the first sound (word
or syllable) is coming from the speaker on the left the second sound is coming
from the speaker on the right, and vice versa. People initially hear a jumble
of meaningless sounds, but after a while distinct words and phrases suddenly appear.
The effect is often so vivid that people may become convinced that different
words and phrases have been inserted into the track, despite my insistence to
the contrary. As I describe, ‘phantom’
words and phrases are often related to what is on the listener’s mind. I also describe and discuss this effect in my
blog for Psychology Today at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/illusions-and-curiosities/200906/phantom-words In his book “Rorschach Audio: Art and
Illusion for Sound” Joe Banks describes this effect and relates it to the
visual Rorchach test.
Historically, I discovered this effect when I was exploring
the possibility of obtaining something like the octave illusion with verbal
material using headphones. This didn’t work well, but I discovered by chance
that when the words and phrases were presented via loudspeakers rather than
headphones these striking illusions occurred.
All best,
Diana
Professor Diana Deutsch Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr. #0109 La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA
858-453-1558 (tel) 858-453-4763 (fax)
Massimo:
Diana Deutsch has a CD that includes a "Phantom Word" demonstration that sounds related to what you are describing.
Different words are perceived while listening to a repeating sound pattern.
I think what is heard is in the signal, but variations in perceptual grouping over time causes different words to "appear."
E. Bruce Goldstein
Departments of Psychology
University of Arizona
University of Pittsburgh
________________________________________
From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Massimo Grassi [massimo.grassi@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 7:46 AM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Does anybody know a similar study?
Dear list members,
yesterday I colleague played me a sample (a sentence) of highly degraded
speech. It was a recording made in a highly noisy environment. It
included speech (a conversation) that was hardly intelligible except for
a few occasional words.
The colleague asked me to listen to the sample and pay attention whether
I was able to spot a few target words. These words were not intelligible
to me.
The colleague then selected a portion of the recording and played it in
loop. That portion included (according to him) one target word. After a
few loops I was able to "perceive" the word.
This is exactly the problem. I'm wandering whether it was just a
suggestion due to the repeated listening of an ambiguous auditory
signal. A kid of auditory Rorschach test: there seem to be nothing at
the beginning but if you keep listening you can hear whatever you like.
Is there anybody out there that is aware of studies that investigated
whether listening in loop to an ambiguous signal can lead to hear things
that are not in the signal?
I didn't find anything yet.
Thank you all in advance,
m
--
http://www.psy.unipd.it/~grassi/
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4614-2196-2
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