CHAPTER 11 - Hearing

Question 1

What are some of the functions of sound? Especially note what information sound provides that is not provided by vision

Question 2

What are two possible definitions of sound? (Remember the tree falling in the forest)

Question 3

How is the sound stimulus described in terms of pressure changes in the air? What is a pure tone? Sound frequency?

Question 4

What is the amplitude of a sound? Why was the decibel scale developed to measure amplitude? Is decibel “perceptual” or “physical”?

Question 5

What is a complex tone? What are harmonics? Frequency spectra?

Question 6

How does removing one or more harmonics from a complex tone affect the repetition rate of the sound stimulus?

Question 7

What is the relationship between sound level and loudness? Which one is physical, and which one is perceptual?

Question 8

What is the audibility curve, and what does it tell us about the relationship between a tone’s physical characteristics (level and frequency) and perceptual characteristics (threshold and loudness)

Question 9

What is pitch? What physical property is it more closely related to? What are tone height and tone chroma?

Question 10

What is the effect of the missing fundamental?

Question 11

What is timbre? Describe the characteristics of complex tones and how these characteristics determine timbre

Question 12

Describe the structure of the ear, focusing on the role that each component plays in transmitting the vibrations that enter the outer ear to the auditory receptors in the inner ear

Question 13

Focusing on the inner ear, describe (a) what causes the bending of the stereocilia of the hair cells; (b) what happens when the stereocilia bend; (c) how phase locking causes the electrical signal to follow the timing of the sound stimulus

Question 14

Describe Békésy’s discovery of how the basilar membrane vibrates. Specifically, what is the relationship between sound frequency and basilar membrane vibration?

Question 15

What does it mean to say that the cochlea acts as a filter? How is this supported by the tonotopic map and by neural frequency tuning curves? What is a neuron’s characteristic frequency?

Question 16

How do the outer hair cells function as cochlear amplifiers?

Question 17

Describe place theory

Question 18

How is place theory challenged by the effect of the missing fundamental? How can a modification of place theory explain the effect of the missing fundamental?

Question 19

Describe the Burns and Viemeister experiment, which used amplitude-modulated noise, and its implications for place theory

Question 20

What is the evidence supporting the idea that pitch perception depends on the timing of auditory nerve firing?

Question 21

What are resolved and unresolved harmonics? What is the connection between resolved harmonics and place theory?

Question 22

What problems do Oxenham and al’s. (2011) experiment pose for understanding the physiology of pitch perception?

Question 23

Describe the pathway that leads from the ear to the brain

Question 24

Describe the experiments that suggest a relationship between the firing of neurons in the auditory cortex and the pitch of complex tones in (a) the marmoset and (b) humans

Question 25

What is the connection between hair cell damage and hearing loss? Exposure to occupational or leisure noise and hearing loss?

Question 26

What is hidden hearing loss?

Question 27

Describe the procedures of measuring auditory thresholds in infants. How does the infant’s audibility curve compare to the adult curve?

Question 28

Describe experiments that show that newborn infants can recognize their mother’s voice, and that this capacity can be traced to the infants’ having heard the mother talking during development in the womb