Subject: Re: Informational Masking From: Peter Lennox <peter(at)LENNOX01.FREESERVE.CO.UK> Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 11:01:56 -0000You're right: in the example of the gobbledegook sentence, we are talking about a shorter time span. I think it's the same with a 'tune' - some sort of understanding is required to reproduce it. So it's not just a linguistic thing. In fact, repeating a sound seems to be an attempt at understanding. I'm not sure if this is related to VS Ramachandran's "mirror neurons". ppl ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christian Kaernbach" <chris(at)PSYCHOLOGIE.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE> To: <AUDITORY(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA> Sent: 03 March 2001 07:16 Subject: Re: Informational Masking > > ... I can think of many examples where I'm able to repeat, after a > > period, a very reasonable representation of the sound of the sentence > > which had been spoken to me, even though so doing produces a sentence > > which is complete nonsense. > ... > > in the 'gobbledegook' reconstruction of the sentence, it's usually > > the consonants that I've got wrong (.....I think). The vowel sounds > > seem fairly right, and the rhythm overall seems right, even though > > the division into words has often gone awry. > > Could it be that this gobbledegook reconstruction happens after a time > span which is closer to 20 s than to 15 min? 20 s is quite a long time, > so one might be surprised to be able to do so after 20 s, though I > wouldn't. Long auditory storage (Cowan, 1984) can be as long as that. In > cases with more than a minute inbetween I would suspect partial > understanding of the sentence. > - Christian >