Re: [AUDITORY] [External] Re: Question: same/different judgments across domains.

Here is the pdf of Pollack and Pisoni (1971)

From: Pisoni, David B. <pisoni@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 6:06 AM
To: Jan Schnupp <jan.schnupp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [External] Re: Question: same/different judgments across domains.

Hello Max:

One solution to your problem about which test to select might be to use the “4IAX test of paired similarity” that I invented in 1971 to study speech discrimination. The differences between AX same vs. different and the 4IAX test are summarized in a short paper written by Irv Pollack and me back in 1971.

I have attached a pdf of that paper for you to read over.

I hope this helps. I agree with Jan Schnupp about the standard AX test of same vs. different. The criteria for sameness is often unclear to an observer and may vary from trial to trial depending on the signals presented.

That is why I came up with the idea of the test of 4IAX test of paired similarity, which preserves some of the attributes of a conventional same-different test but provides a benchmark on each trial for “sameness.”

Very best wishes with your project….David B. Pisoni, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana USA

From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Jan Schnupp <000000e042a1ec30-dmarc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 12:29 AM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [External] Re: Question: same/different judgments across domains.

This message was sent from a non-IU address. Please exercise caution when clicking links or opening attachments from external sources.

Same/different judgments are always a bad idea. Unless stimuli are actually identical, they are not the same, so the observer has to make some sort of "close enough" judgment which always involves a bit of a fudge in their minds. Much better to play 3 sounds and ask which was the odd one out, or two pairs and ask which pair was more different. In those cases you have a much more unambiguous way of declaring a response objectively correct or incorrect. There is no internal "close enough" criterion that may vary from subject to subject or from domain to domain. Playing with duration is tricky. Certain categories of sounds have characteristic temporal envelopes and if you make them "much shorter than they should be" then they are no longer good representives of their domain or category.

Good luck with your experiment.

Jan

On Sat, May 8, 2021, 12:34 PM Max Henry <max.henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi folks. Long time listener, first time caller...

Some friends of mind are setting up an experiment with same/different judgements between pairs of sounds. They want to test sounds from a variety of domains: speech, music, natural sounds, etc.

One of the researchers suggested that listeners will have different listening strategies depending on the domain, and this might pose a problem for the experiment: our sensitivity for difference in pitch, for example, might be very acute for musical sounds but much less-so for speech sounds.

I have a hunch that if the stimuli were short enough, this might sidestep the problem. Ie, if I played you 250 milliseconds of speech, or 250 milliseconds of music, you would not necessarily use any particular domain-specific listening strategy to tell the difference. It would simply be “sound.”

I suspect this is because a sound that’s sufficiently short can stay entirely in echoic memory. For longer sounds, you have to consolidate the information somehow, and the way that you consolidate it has to do with the kind of domain it falls into. For speech sounds, we can throw away the acute pitch information.

But that’s just a hunch. I’m wondering if this rings true for any of you, that is to say, if it reminds you of any particular research. I’d love to read about it.

It's been a pleasure to follow these e-mails. I'm glad to finally have an excuse to write. Wishing you all well.

Max Henry (he/his)

Graduate Researcher and Teaching Assistant

Music Technology Area

McGill University.

www.linkedin.com/in/maxshenry

github.com/maxsolomonhenry

www.maxhenrymusic.com/