Week 4- Auditory perception

Question 1

What is auditory perception?

Answer 1

It is how we make sense of the sounds around us

Question 2

Why is auditory perception important?

Answer 2

It is crucial for social interaction, pleasure, danger awareness, and hearing when someone needs us

Question 3

What is the function of the auditory system

Answer 3

To detect sounds in the environment, especially changes in sounds

Question 4

What two main things does the auditory system help us determine?

Answer 4

1. Where the sound is coming from (localisation).
2. What the sound is (object identification).

Question 5

What is sound?

Answer 5

A series of pressure changes in the air.

Question 6

What are the two main properties of sound?

Answer 6

1. Frequency (measured in Hertz, related to pitch).
2. Amplitude (measured in Decibels, related to volume).

Question 7

What is the range of human hearing?

Answer 7

From 20Hz to 20,000Hz (20kHz).

Question 8

What happens to the upper limit of hearing as we age?

Answer 8

It declines.

Question 9

What is the typical frequency range for conversation?

Answer 9

Around 1,000 - 2,000 Hz.

Question 10

What is a human “superpower” related to hearing?

Answer 10

The ability to distinguish between similar sounds.

Question 11

Can newborns distinguish between sounds?

Answer 11

Yes, they can distinguish sounds like ‘bah’ and ‘pah.’

Question 12

Can fetuses process speech?

Answer 12

Yes, speech is processed by fetuses.

Question 13

What is the hearing range of dogs?

Answer 13

40Hz to ~50kHz.

Question 14

What frequency do mouse pups make distress calls at?

Answer 14

Around 40kHz.

Question 15

What is the hearing range for bats?

Answer 15

Bats can process sounds from 9kHz up to >100kHz.

Question 16

Why do owls have one ear higher than the other?

Answer 16

To optimise sound localisation.

Question 17

What is the function of the cochlea in hearing?

Answer 17

The cochlea converts sound waves into neural signals

Question 18

How do hair cells in the cochlea function?

Answer 18

Hair cells respond to different tonotopic (organised by pitch)

Question 19

Can cochlear hair cells be repaired if damaged?

Answer 19

No, once damaged, hair cells cannot be repaired or replaced.

Question 20

What is transduction in the cochlea?

Answer 20

Transduction is the process where hair cells convert sound waves into electrical impulses.

Question 21

How does the neural signal leave the cochlea?

Answer 21

The neural signal leaves the cochlea through the auditory nerve (vestibular nerve).

Question 22

What path does the neural signal follow after leaving the cochlea?

Answer 22

The signal travels through the auditory nerve to the cochlear nucleus, then to the superior olivary complex.

Question 23

What is the function of the superior olivary complex?

Answer 23

It compares sound disparities to help with sound localisation.

Question 24

What happens as the neural signal ascends through the brainstem?

Answer 24

The signal reaches the inferior colliculus in the midbrain, then goes to the medial geniculate nucleus (thalamus), and finally to the auditory cortex.

Question 25

Where is the primary auditory cortex located?

Answer 25

It is located in the medial temporal lobe.

Question 26

How is the primary auditory cortex organised?

Answer 26

It is organised tonotopically, meaning it responds to specific frequencies.

Question 27

What is echoic memory?

Answer 27

Echoic memory is a form of auditory sensory memory, where sounds are temporarily stored for about 2 seconds.

Question 28

Why is echoic memory important?

Answer 28

It helps us hold and process multiple recent sounds to combine and understand their meaning.

Question 29

What is speech perception?

Answer 29

It is the complex process of understanding speech, which involves identifying and interpreting sounds.

Question 30

Why is speech perception important?

Answer 30

It allows us to understand spoken language, even though individual speech sounds (like letters) vary greatly at the frequency level.

Question 31

What makes speech perception challenging?

Answer 31

Speech is often contaminated with other sounds, spoken rapidly, and needs to be interpreted semantically.

Question 32

What are the two main ways we recognise speech?

Answer 32

Bottom-up processing and top-down processing

Question 33

What is bottom-up processing in speech perception?

Answer 33

It is stimulus-driven, where we perceive sounds based on their qualities and features to understand them.

Question 34

What is top-down processing in speech perception?

Answer 34

It is internally driven, where we use our prior knowledge, beliefs, and expectations to interpret sounds.

Question 35

What is feature detection in speech perception?

Answer 35

It’s identifying individual features in sounds to recognise speech, similar to detecting visual features.

Question 36

What are templates in speech perception?

Answer 36

They are stored patterns in memory that we use to match incoming sounds for recognition.

Question 37

What is a problem with bottom-up ideas for speech perception?

Answer 37

Sounds vary due to accents, inflection, and context, so we don’t always hear the same sound in the same way.

Question 38

Why is it hard to identify a single word out of context?

Answer 38

We can identify words in sentences easily, but struggle with isolated words due to lack of context.

Question 39

How do we fill in missing sounds in speech?

Answer 39

If a sound in a sentence is missing or interrupted, we often fill in the gap based on context and meaning.

Question 40

What role does familiarity play in speech perception?

Answer 40

When we know a language, we can perceive gaps between words, even though speech is a continuous flow of sound.

Question 41

What happens when we hear a language we don’t know?

Answer 41

We struggle to identify individual words because we cannot easily perceive the gaps between them.

Question 42

What was the aim of Miller & Isard’s (1963) study on speech perception?

Answer 42

They wanted to see how accurately people could repeat sentences when sound quality and meaning varied.

Question 43

What were the three types of sentences used in Miller & Isard’s (1963) study?

Answer 43

1. Normal sentences
2. Anomalous sentences
3. Ungrammatical strings

Question 44

What did Miller & Isard (1963) find about speech recognition accuracy?

Answer 44

More noise and less meaningful sentences both led to lower accuracy.

Question 45

What was the conclusion of Miller & Isard’s (1963) study?

Answer 45

Words are understood best when arranged meaningfully, and we use context, not just individual words, to understand speech.

Question 46

What are errors in speech perception?

Answer 46

Mishearing or misunderstanding words, such as getting song lyrics wrong.

Question 47

What is an auditory illusion?

Answer 47

When what we hear is influenced by visual cues, making us perceive a different sound than what is actually being spoken.

Question 48

What is the McGurk effect?

Answer 48

An auditory illusion where seeing one sound (visual) and hearing another (audio) makes us perceive a third, different sound.

Question 49

How do audio and visual inputs interact in the McGurk effect?

Answer 49

Audio and visual information merge to form a single, combined perception.

Question 50

What happens when we look away from someone speaking?

Answer 50

We may assume we can still accurately hear them, but what we see actually influences what we hear.