Bregman (1994) - Chapter 1 (1-46)

Question 1

What is Auditory Scene Analysis?

Answer 1

The Perceptual Organization of Sound

Question 2

Auditory Scene Analysis. The Perceptual Organization of Sound - Author?

Answer 2

Albert S. Bregman 1994

Question 3

What is perception for Bregman?

Answer 3

The process of taking sensory input and deriving useful representations of reality from it.

Question 4

What is the scene analysis problem in machine vision?

Answer 4

The allocation of regions to objects

Question 5

An example to clarify how difficult auditory scene analysis can seem:

Answer 5

A game: digging two narrow channels at a lake. Guessing by the waves what’s going on on the lake.

Question 6

What is the scene analysis problem in vision (generally speaking)?

Answer 6

The correct grouping of regions.

Question 7

Why is the human ear believed to provide the human brain with a neural pattern that is much like a spectrogram?

Answer 7

Because of the long coiled ribbon in the inner ear called the basilar membrane. It’s sensible to low frequencies on one end and to high frequencies on the other end and everything in between.

Question 8

Why is it not enough to think of the inner ear as providing us with spectrogram like neural activity?

Answer 8

Even access to spectrograms is not sufficient to discern elements in the auditory scene. The auditory world is very messy.

Question 9

What is an “auditory stream”?

Answer 9

Our perceptual grouping of the parts of the neural spectrogram that go together.

Question 10

Bregman refers to the perceptual unit that represents a single happening as …

Answer 10

… an auditory stream.

Question 11

It’s better to use the term auditory stream instead of sound, because

Answer 11

First: a physical happening and its corresponding mental representation can consist of more than one sound.
Second: sound refers to physical sound and to our mental experience of it.

Question 12

What is the word for sound in the physical world and for sound in our minds?

Answer 12

Physical world: acoustic event

Mental world: auditory stream

Question 13

The exclusive allocation principle says that

Answer 13

a sensory element should not be used in more than one description at a time. If the line is assigned to the vase, that assignment uses up the line.

Question 14

Describe the “old-plus-new heuristic”!

Answer 14

answer in chapter 3

Question 15

An example experiment for exculsive allocation principle and old-plus-new heuristics:

Answer 15

B
         A
CCCF   FCC
Bregman and Rudnicky (1975)
Order of AB was hard to get, when Fs and AB formed a stream.

Question 16

Principle of belongingness?

Answer 16

features cannot be experienced as disemodied.

must be attached to objects.

Question 17

An example for a missasignment illusion:

Answer 17

Diana Deutsch 1974:
R: high low high low
L: low high low high
heared (when listener assumed single tone):
R: high high
L: low low
Derive the pitch from one ear and the location from monitoring the higher tone -> missasignments possible

Question 18

Auditory streaming effect - experiment

Answer 18

1: low, 6: highest
sequence: 1 4 2 5 3 6
slow: heard as one sequence
fast: heard as two streams in parallel:
1 2 3 and 4 5 6
Impossible to focus on both streams.

Question 19

auditory streaming effect depends on:

Answer 19

frequency difference

tempo

Question 20

Auditory streaming effect and Gestalt psychology:

proximity?

Answer 20

in auditory stimuli proximity is two-fold:
vertically (frequency)
horizontally (time)
can also be read as two Gestalt principles:
similarity and proximity

Question 21

What is apparent motion?

Answer 21

A _ and _ A alternating is perceived as a moving A.

Question 22

Apparent motion laws by …

Answer 22

… Körte 1915.

Question 23

How can visually presented fragements be made to allicit closure?

Answer 23

Masking
Example: Fragments of B unmasked and masked.
Same in sound: Masking with white noise bursts

Question 24

Closure mechanism is a way to deal with …

Answer 24

… missing information.

Question 25

Closure mechanism experiment in auditory domain:

Answer 25

Dannenbring 1976:

tonal glides without and with masking bursts of white noise filling the gaps.

Question 26

Bregman, Pinker 1978
A
B
C

Answer 26

Assigning these to sources:
Source 1: A Source 2: BC (complex tone)
Source 1: A B Source 2: C
Both possible to perceive.

Question 27

Bregman and Pinker 1978 show two integration mechanisms:

Answer 27

Sequential integration: grouping events that follow each other in time
Spectral integration: grouping events that occurr at the same time

Question 28

Mechanism Bregman proposes for grouping:

Answer 28

heuristics (taken from computer modeling approach)

Question 29

Auditory scene analysis is seen as an accomplishment. How can it be interpreted as a breakdown?

Answer 29

Segregation into two streams occurs because a neural mechanism responsible for tracking changes in pitch has temporarily become less effective.
Experiments show that the segregation becomes stronger with longer repetitions of the cycle of tones. Presumably the detector for change has become habituated.

Question 30

Innate stream segregation?

Answer 30

primitive stream segregation

constraints in the environment that hold accross time, location and cultures (like light from above)

Question 31

Learned stream segregation?

Answer 31

Schema-based segregation

not constant, e.g.: music, different birds

Question 32

Roger Shepard “psychophysical complementarity”:

Answer 32

physical objects maintain shape, while rotated

same in mental rotation

Question 33

Relation between innate and learned components of stream segregation:

Answer 33

innate ones serve to bootstrap learned ones

Question 34

Gestaltists belief most of the principles are …

Answer 34

.. innate.

Question 35

Laurent Demany wanted to ..

Answer 35

.. find out about innate stream segregation.

Babies < 4 month

Question 36

Laurent Demany and his research on innate stream segregation used …

Answer 36

… method of habituation and dishabituation:
Babies look at screen and get rewarded by sound.
Same sound -> reward wears off:
H1 - L1 - H2 - L2 and reversed: Two streams stay the same. One strem is reversed.
Babies reacted to reversed stream as being the same
-> stream segragation had occurred

Question 37

Three auditory phenomena based on the stream formation:

Answer 37

the streaming effect
the decomposition of complex tones (ABC experiment)
perceptual closure through occluding sounds