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Regularities in Real-World Sounds That Could Facilitate Perceptual Grouping
Authors:
CUSACK, R.
Reference:
Association for Research in Otolaryngology Abstract, 717, 2003
Year of publication:
2003
CBU number:
5605
Abstract:
Often, the sound arriving at the ears is a mixture from more than one source, but we usually only interested in one. If we have a priori knowledge of the acoustic characteristics of the source we wish to listen to, then we might be able to selectively attend and devote more processing to the appropriate sounds. However, we might not know the exact acoustic characteristics of the target source, or there might be more than one source with similar characteristics. Fortunately, there is another type of information that the auditory system can exploit. There are regularities in sounds produced by common sources that allow their parts to be perceptually grouped over frequency and time. By identifying simple acoustic features and then performing experiments using these, several that affect perceptual grouping have been identified, such as common onset, harmonicity, and continuity of pitch over time. However, the choice of acoustic features tested is somewhat arbitrary and not made with reference to the properties of common real-world sounds, and it is not clear whether they form an exhaustive set, or their relative usefulness. In the current study, we analyze several sets of common sounds, including speech, music and environmental sounds, to identify the regularities in them that might be most useful for perceptual grouping. A good general agreement was found between the strongest regularities and those cues found to be important, while those cues found to be unimportant do not correspond to strong regularities. We investigate the relative significance of simple first order regularities and higher levels of regularity. The implications of these findings for the mechanisms of auditory perceptual grouping and their development are discussed.