Classroom B: Okay, how's everyone doing
Ashley Wray: good? How are you?
Classroom B: I can see my thinking about that question, how am, how? How am I doing? How right.
Classroom B: Everyone surviving reading week is coming up.
Classroom B: We'll get there.
Classroom B: Okay, so today, we're going to focus on a topic that actually isn't really covered all that often in in a lot of psychology, textbooks and courses.
Classroom B: we're going to talk about auditory processing or our ability to process another. So
Classroom B: sounds now.
Classroom B: one of the reasons that we we tend not to discuss
Classroom B: auditory processing or hearing all that much in in psychology courses. Is that
Classroom B: sensory perceptual research really does tend to focus on vision.
Classroom B: It's the. It's the sensory modality that is by far most
Classroom B: in a way, because II think a lot of researchers. Intuitive
Classroom B: thought is that vision is, in a way sort of like, fairly private. It's one of our sort of
Classroom B: in in the way that
Classroom B: understanding
Classroom B: perceive in that world. But
Classroom B: auditory processing is important. As well
Classroom B: use the the sound information in our environment
Classroom B: many ways as as we've identified in the textbook chapter. And as we'll discuss today.
Classroom B: now, the nice thing is that we don't need to start from scratch, because there are a lot of ways in which vision and by the way, that that vision functions. And with we process visual information. There are many parallels between visual processing.
Classroom B: It's great processing.
Classroom B: So just, you know, I'll just sort of get get some of your impressions and thoughts based on your your reading of the chapter and and your understanding of the concepts. What are some commonalities or parallels between our visual processing in our model?
Classroom B: Some things that they seem to have in common.
Ashley Wray: They can be both top down and bottom up.
Classroom B: Yeah. And and I'd even make that stronger. So the new masters yesterday, and be both top down and bottom up. I'd make that stronger by saying that they both are a a combination of of bottom up and and talk down processing.
Classroom B: It's it's, you know, it's all, even on one or the other. This is like our our end.
Classroom B: We had product ever auditory processing. Much like net product of our visual processing. Is com is the result of a combination of these sort of fundamental building things up front of the ground processes. And you know, top down processes that are better by expectation. Experience?
Classroom B: Yeah. So absolutely. That's that's an important parallel.
Classroom B: And we'll we'll sort of, you know. We'll sort of see that
Classroom B: represented in the different approaches or or theoretical frameworks, that we would study auditory processing
Classroom B: things like cycle physics that are very much bought up. Then we have things like desult theories, or or even thought or analysis, which are orbit pop. Now.
Classroom B: other parallels.
Classroom B: Yeah, there's there's a localization aspect to it. When we when we see something, and when we hear something, we we are partially able to. Some of the information that we get from that sensory information is location.
Classroom B: When we hear a sound we can make some relatively accurate judgment, for where that sound is coming from vision, we can also, determine sort of spatial layout, visual information for processing and and much like the visual system the auditorium does have. It appears to have 2 separate sort of processing streams in the frame, one that's responsible for identifying
Classroom B: downs.
Classroom B: you know, identifying what you know, what type of sound it is. And then another part of the break that seems to be responsible for processing where that sound is coming from.
Classroom B: because, like the visual system, has a sort of system and and aware system
Classroom B: sunlight over simplifying the the functions of those 2 streams. But that's that's an interesting and you know, right, they both have separate neural processing areas for the different types of information that we can proceed
Classroom B: based on that sensory processing.
Classroom B: I,
Classroom B: some other weird parallels. Even even the way that we we take the physical stimulus that we're perceiving, and translates that to the actual perceptual characteristics of sound have some odd parallels with with vision. So what like? What are we actually perceiving.
Classroom B: like, what's the physical stimulus that we're processing when we're processing? Now.
Ashley Wray: frequency
Classroom B: frequency is a characteristic of the physical stimulus that we're we're processing. But what's the actual physical thing that we're processing when we're when we're hearing things
Ashley Wray: waves some kind of wave.
Classroom B: Yeah. Does anyone want to add to actually.
Classroom B: yeah, I mean, quote. So we can build on that. So might say, the vibrating molecules in the air. It's it's getting very close to it. What we're actually, we talk about a sound wave. What we're talking about is the the oscillation of molecules in the air becoming compressed, and and what's called rarefied or or expanded.
Classroom B: So when we talk about a sound wave, we're just talking about that that fluctuation between those 2 States, which is when I was saying, Bios quotes, that's caused by objects vibrating the environment.
Classroom B: So right now, as as I'm speaking, my mobile wars are vibrating, which is causing that compression and expansion of molecules in the air which then travels through reaches your ears. And that's what you end up. Perceiving
Classroom B: I
Classroom B: for our vision. It's it.
Classroom B: Waves of of light, either being emitted from or reflecting off of objects, actually is mentioning frequency. So if we imagine, like a simplified version of that of one of those waves, we could have a wave that might look like that.
Classroom B: or one that looks like this.
Classroom B: Now, this is this is what actually means, by differences in frequency, the space between the the peaks or the or the valleys out in that wave in vision
Classroom B: that's going to translate into our perception of color or hue. the the wavelength or frequency of a light wave will change the color that we perceive
Classroom B: in hearing the pitch.
Classroom B: the the talk wave something with a low frequency will perceive as having a low pitch, a lower sound, something of a higher frequency. We're going to perceive as having a higher pitch, a higher temperature.
Classroom B: Now another characteristic of a wave is its intensity or amplitude. But so how high those peaks and valleys end up going and envision.
Classroom B: I want to refer to this as as the intensity of a stimulus for for vision. What makes something more or less attend is something can be very dim, which is a low intensity, visual experience. Something can be very bright which is the high intensity, visual experience
Classroom B: for sounds. Does anyone know what this translates into.
Classroom B: and we have a bit of a hint in in reflecting something about being attempting
Classroom B: of the of the perceptual experience.
Ashley Wray: I can guess. I don't know if I'm right, though. because it hurts
Classroom B: so Hertz hurts is just the measurement of frequency. So we're just talking about now what we're trying to determine. Here is the
Classroom B: what aspect of our actual perception of sound is going to be determined by the amplitude of the wave.
Classroom B: Another another hit here is. You know, when you're using like a speaker or something like that, one of the components is an app supplier.
Classroom B: And what is the purpose of an amplifier.
Classroom B: Yeah, makes it louder. Exactly.
Classroom B: This is going to correspond to our perception of all you
Classroom B: high amplitude, high intensity. Waves are loud, sounds, low amplitude, low intensity. Waves are quiet sounds.
Classroom B: So we even have these parallels in the, in the types of of actual physical characteristics, of what we're perceiving, and how that maps onto our our experience.
Classroom B: Now, the the final parallel that I'm going to suggest or put forward is that the primary challenge
Classroom B: of the auditory system is very similar to the primary challenge of the system.
Classroom B: So vision is something that, of course, as as a you know, students of psychology, or or we students who have taken some psychology courses or more familiar with some of those concepts. But ultimately, when we look at just the the visual information that you're receiving at any given time one of the primary things that you need to do is
Classroom B: distinguish
Classroom B: and sort of create boundaries across the different things that we're seeing. So when I'm looking at around this room, I perceive individual chairs, tables, screen people.
Classroom B: and I can group those into those specific, discrete objects.
Classroom B: That's already a fairly complicated, cognitive task.
Classroom B: And then, you know, we, we organize these things according to some of these, you know, basic just all principles. You know, things that are close together tend to
Classroom B: object, things that are similar to cover brightness and form for the same object.
Classroom B: I have been worried that the goal of auditory processing is both very similar
Classroom B: to take some of the the sound information that we're pursuing at any period of time and putting it into its individual discrete sources.
Classroom B: You know, if multiple people are talking, they want to be able to determine
Classroom B: which you know which information is coming. From which voice? And I'd also put forward that the process is much more difficult for our auditory system. What we're looking at here from the tech book is what called spectrogram. It's just like a a basic layout of the different frequencies and sound waves that that we that we're experiencing within a particular environment. And
Classroom B: did anyone make heads or tails of this? No.
Classroom B: is it extremely? This seems like a an extremely complex stimulus. And all it is is one person saying Hello, and another person saying goodbye. I don't know at the same time.
Classroom B: So these are the types of auditory problems that we're going to experience in our environment on a regular basis. And we don't think about how challenging that process is because to us it's not challenging.
Classroom B: you know right now. There are a bunch of sound going on in the background, hards driving by. Obviously.
Classroom B: they're going to events periodically, people in the hallway. But you don't have any problem distinguishing between those different sounds
Classroom B: when a car drives by, or somebody drives by with their music playing too loudly, or there's a car, or nobody here thinks or or make, you know, gets confused, and believes that that was a sound is being produced by my events. You're very easily able to switch
Classroom B: those sounds into their individual sources and keep those things separate.
Classroom B: But if we look at the actual physical stimulus, we can see that that's probably more challenging than we might imagine.
Classroom B: It's something, for example, that computers or AI systems are not very good at
Classroom B: something that we are very naturally well tuned to do. Our brains are, have evolved to perform this task rigorously and and quite accurately. In most cases.
Classroom B: That's sort of a basic summary of of what our auditory systems are are built, any questions, thoughts, ideas.
Classroom B: So there, you know, we, although not quite as as well research as vision. There are people who have and continue to study the beginner workings of our auditory system and the textbook chapter outlines a few sort of theoretical frameworks that that approach that problem
Classroom B: to to foreshadow the the text presents them as sort of competing theories. I'm I'm going to kind of outline those theories. And I'm going to put forward a suggestion that they're actually more complimentary than they are eating. They. They really seem to just outline
Classroom B: different aspects of auditory processing, all of which are important and and correct in some way.
Classroom B: Well, we'll also probably see that I mean a lot of the with the exception of one, all of these theories are also here out of perspective.
Classroom B: reflected
Classroom B: some of the parallel ways in which they function. So the the first perspective. This is actually probably one of the the oldest historical frameworks in just experimental psychology. General any type of psychology known as psychophysics. Anyone familiar with this concept, even if it's just from the textbook chapter.
Classroom B: what are what are some of the basic goals and ideas of psycho critics
Classroom B: interested in
Classroom B: the
Classroom B: how to best describe the translation from a physical stimulus to our first. The thing that we actually have talking about these things between
Classroom B: pre, the frequency of a way sort of away different auditory and visual perceptual characteristics of those map onto. And the psychophysists were interested in in not doing that on. You know, we kind of described in what we might call a qualitative.
Classroom B: So identifying the types of perceptual information, add onto the characteristics of the stimulus psychophysics was interested in the actual, like quantitative, mathematical functions that describe. For example, how amplitude translates into brightness or into volume.
Classroom B: So they would, they would do. Sort of 2 primary things
Classroom B: there. There are 2 primary sort of psychological phenomena that they're interested in. The first one is known as an absolute threshold.
Classroom B: And
Classroom B: what that? What is sort of what that really means? An absolute threshold is what is the the minimum amount of intensity, of a stimulus
Classroom B: that we can perceive. So what's the the minimum in the context of auditory processing? What's the minimum amplitude that we are able to reliably detect.
Classroom B: So the the way that these experiments would work is you would sit
Classroom B: in a lab in a sound control room with headphones, and they on each trial they would either present a sound or not.
Classroom B: And then your decision on each trial is to determine whether they're a sound. But they're not a sound.
Classroom B: And and they do that hundreds and hundreds of times varying the the amplitude or the volume of that sound. And they they can very reliably, then detect what is the the threshold or the point at which you are able to reliably detect whether there was a sound.
Classroom B: because eventually there's going to be a volume or an amplitude where you you don't know. you can't reliably detect it, because it's too quiet. and you can do the same thing with vision by presenting lights that vary and and their brightness.
Classroom B: and the other characteristic or phenomenon they're interested in is now, instead of an absolute threshold a different threshold.
Classroom B: and, as you might be able to guess, based on the the terminology they're using here. This is now, instead of detecting the stimulus being able to reliably determine whether to stimulate are the same or different.
Classroom B: So how how much do does the volume of 2 different sounds do differ for us to be able to detect who they are, in fact, different sounds.
Classroom B: And again, do this through hundreds of trials, and and very precisely and mathematically be able to identify those
Classroom B: out of those thresholds
Classroom B: they've they've, you know, they still have insights that we we're aware of today, for example, with different thresholds. It's it's it's active on
Classroom B: some difference between them. But the ratio between them.
Classroom B: So as we get to louder and louder sounds, we need a larger difference to be able to protect. whether there's
Classroom B: as opposed to very quiet sounds, relatively minor differences app
Classroom B: that making some sense questions about that
Classroom B: as we're and we're working through.
Classroom B: That's that sort of theoretical perspective. We can. We can probably see that. It's it's very much a a bottom up driven theory, right. It's talking about like, how do we take the actual physical stimulus and then build that up into some sort of perceptual experience? And that that becomes one of its weaknesses, so that the weakness of cycle visits is that it's very good
Classroom B: dawn. The onex
Classroom B: search because they wanted to
Classroom B: have a lot of control over the characteristics of sound, vision and sound these what are called pure tones
Classroom B: so so we are gonna be able to break that with that a little bit.
Classroom B: Let's say that we're we're talking about the the frequency or visual sound. 4 40 is standard records. For whatever reason it first, once they're in a middle who has a middle 80
Classroom B: on on a musical scale. If you're talking about a piano.
Classroom B: So that tends to be the reference. A pure tone is just that the the actual sound wave is a single sound wave at the the frequency of 440 Hertz.
Classroom B: In reality, the sounds that we actually work with are not pure tones. They have what are called overtones or or harmonics. and it's usually the the combination of those harmonics that partially determine the the
Classroom B: timber or the the sort of
Classroom B: qualitative characteristics of the sound. You know, 2 sounds, 2 people's voices, or the sounds of 2 instruments at the same volume and the same pitch don't sound the same right.
Classroom B: They have a certain richness and differences in their actual tone, and that's controlled by those those upper frequencies that are also part of natural
Classroom B: cycle businesses, stripping things down, keep you things controlled and and simplified would use the unrealistic, pure tones. And there are ways in which our brains distort processing of those pure tones.
Classroom B: So, for example, depending on the wrong context. Some people hear upper harmonics even represented with a bigger tone.
Classroom B: immediately demonstrating that this isn't just thought about processing. What we're looking at here is a depiction of what's called it's now a famous effect that psychophysics really couldn't explain, known as the missing fundamental
Classroom B: effect.
Classroom B: So if we're looking at, say, like a a a standard sound at 440 hertz. Say the striking of that day on a on a piano. Well, then, have some harmonics, and and the the structure of those harmonics, you, you can see, has a pattern right? So it's we then double it up to 8, 80, and then another 440 to to 1320 and that's and then they know those frequents are gonna vary in their intensity.
Classroom B: If I present you with this. So a wave, a pure tone at 8 80, a pure phone at at 1320, a pure phone at 7 60. What you would expect from a psycho visits perspective is that you hear something at 8 80,
Classroom B: that's all. What happens. What we, what we hear is that middle a 440 Hertz. Now.
Classroom B: even though that particular frequency is not present in the sound.
Classroom B: so the the sort of the fundamental frequency is missing, and our brain fills it in.
Classroom B: Based on the ratio of those other harmonics of those other frequencies.
Classroom B: Again, something that can't really be explained by psycho business. How can. You know, if we're we're talking about materially bottom up processing, how can we hear something that isn't actually there
Classroom B: suggesting what we already know from our our conversation of vision and general perceptual characteristics, that
Classroom B: we we also expect certain things to happen, and at top-down processing influences. What we actually end up perceiving
Classroom B: so the historically, the pushback is that psycho business perspective was a a relatively well known framework known as the the just salt
Classroom B: psychologist, or the the just salt principles of perception again often discussed in vision, but still entirely applies to auditory processing as well. What's what's the key idea of of the just stalled psychologist or the default principle of perception.
Classroom B: Any thoughts.
Classroom B: the the phrase by which most people tend to know the the salt psychologist is the phrase. The whole was Rayner and Solomon's part.
Classroom B: That was kind of the catch phrase that came out of this idea, and the the overall idea of just self psychology was that these top down processes allow us and and help us, and in fact, dictate the way that we organize perceptual information. So
Classroom B: okay, often discussed in vision. But this is would be a sort of classic example or demonstration of a just all principle. So what do we? What do we tend to proceed here in that in that brand on the whiteboard.
Ashley Wray: the line going all the way through without a pause.
Classroom B: Yeah, we perceive it as a as a line in fact, actually described it as a line I,
Classroom B: and then being obscured by some other object. Yeah, this is the just all principle of continuity.
Classroom B: When we see images like this, when we see
Classroom B: you know what we tend to receive as as an object being obscured by something else. We expect that object to continue, because that's I mean, and this is a talk down process, because that's just based on our experience of the world right
Classroom B: when when I stand here. my legs are sticking out or my arms sticking out here, you don't perceive this as to be separate things.
Classroom B: you perceive this as one object
Classroom B: being obscured by another moment.
Classroom B: Because that's the way things work in the world. It's very unlikely, like we don't tend to encounter things, for one object stops at the exact boundary of something else, and then another similar object continues at the other exact.
Classroom B: and the the salt psychologists identify a large number of principles that we that tend to govern and dictate how we organize and structure our perceptual experience.
Classroom B: To make sure, I optimize this for video. So we get sound.
Classroom B: We're going to here. That's
Classroom B: we can experience the same demonstration 28, that we can experience the same thing with auditory processing. People on Zoom are going to keep an eye on the chat. Some, you know.
Classroom B: sharing sound and videos that doesn't always cooperate on zoom. So let me know if things aren't going well. But this is this is from our Brightman's auditory scene analysis website. And it's gonna be a demonstration of this exact same continuity principle. But in the context of auditory processing rather than vision.
apparent continuity.
Before playing this demonstration.
Classroom B: read the warning about loudness level in the booklet
we present a tone alternating with a silence. then the silence is replaced by a soft white noise.
Classroom B: After each group of cycles the noise is increased in intensity.
In the final group the spectrum level of the noise is the same as that of the tone. At this setting the tone seems continuous behind the noise.
Classroom B: So
Classroom B: based on on your perceptual experience, there does everyone sort of does everyone experience that shift where once that light noise becomes sufficiently loud suddenly once what we're being perceived as 2 separate sounds sort of connect. Right.
Classroom B: Do people get that experience
Classroom B: there? Has my zoom gone?
Classroom B: But an auditory demonstration
Classroom B: of of that, at least, for at least for me, I mean, it starts off as of course there's no, there's virtually no blast of like plays at the start, being, of course, here it's 2 to the same time. There's a positive
Classroom B: I,
Classroom B: as that white noise starts to get introduced, at least by my ears. Eventually I start to perceive at one continuous tone
Classroom B: rather than individual codes.
Classroom B: See some other demonstrations of this, and this is where we're going to start to see some of the the commonalities between these perspectives. I think
Classroom B: some of the other perspectives we've already encountered gives an ecological approach in our special visual processing. It's very similar to to these just off ideas. But it. It differs in the fact that we remember some of the discussion of of his visual theory that much of that much of the information that we could sort of parse out and organize is already essentially present into the environment ready for us to use.
Classroom B: And then the the final, the sort of new idea is this idea of auditorium. This is bad. I've
Classroom B: sort of primary contribution of our Bregman's auditory processing research
Classroom B: The majority of it was conducted at at Mcgill University in in Montreal.
Classroom B: Aye.
Classroom B: the the same idea here. I mean, the idea here is that like this claim. Is that the sort of that we were identifying at the beginning of the class. The goal of auditory processing is to
Classroom B: yep.
Classroom B: sort of break out and and separate the different sources of sounds in our environment. And then, you know, appropriately map those sounds, those different sources.
Classroom B: He I mean, it's very similar to these just all principles, but it's sort of. But
Classroom B: the the change in his theoretical perspective. The terminology that he uses is that we base those decisions on what he calls heuristics.
Classroom B: So when we, for example, talk about that process of continuity. The heuristic is that, well, typically, we don't have these very clean and discrete.
Classroom B: So the reason that we hear that continuity illusion is that it's just really uncommon for us to get a sound that stops exactly when another sound starts, which then softs exactly when another sound starts.
Classroom B: That's an uncommon event in our in our actual natural environment. So our auditory system, from a top down perspective will hear it as a continued tone, because that's just much more consistent
Classroom B: with our experience.
Classroom B: Now, this is where I start to see these things as sort of saying the same thing, and being more complimentary. Because II mean, I don't think the default psychologists would disagree that we use these sort of heuristics. I mean the the overarching default principle is simplicity that we tend to process information based on the simplest possible organization of that structure.
Classroom B: It's it's a simple, you know, expressing, experiencing this as a wine going through or being covered by a box is a simpler
Classroom B: perceptual organization or interpretation. Then 2 separate lines that happen to be on either end of that
Classroom B: same thing with a sound continuing through through a blast of white noise rather than
Classroom B: difference out of the street boundaries.
Classroom B: What we end up seeing is sort of interesting parallels here, where the the types of processes that brayman identifies in auditory seed analysis map very cleanly.
Classroom B: onto the commonest principles based on, based on other classes.
Classroom B: I.
Classroom B: Does anybody know any of the other just false principles? But no one wants to throw things out. What are some of the other in the context of vision. What are some of the ways that we tend to organize
Classroom B: visual information according to the Gisela psychologists?
Classroom B: Would you characterize those circles as being organized in rows or columns?
Ashley Wray: Rose? Yeah. And most people would say, rose
Classroom B: middle one likely to characterize into rows the one on the far right likely to characterize categorize any of the columns
Classroom B: that matching up with people's intuitions and perception.
Classroom B: Yeah, and these are 2 of the primary principles of object salt organization. The third one on the left is the principle of proximity.
Classroom B: We tend to group things that are post together in space.
Classroom B: which is why we kind of perceive that as 3 rows rather than 5 columns, because the objects are are clustered together spatially into rows.
Classroom B: The second, 2 figures are demonstrating the default principle of similarity.
Classroom B: things that that have the same visual characteristics tend to be groups. So we're going to organize this by color into rows and then on the image on the right. We're going to organize, organize it by color into columns.
Classroom B: Okay, we're just looking to. Well listen to to other demonstrations from from brankman site, demonstrating that we tend to organize auditory information in the same way. So again, with with your demonstration as you're listing, just.
Classroom B: you know, sort of be mindful of and and think about,
Classroom B: how your perceptual system is organizing. And and as a result, interpreting the information that you're hearing.
Demonstration 25. Capturing a tonal component out of a mixture. Part one. Please refer to the figure in the booklet. We alternate a single high, pure tone, a with a mixture of 2 other pure tones.
a high one B and a low one C. You are to listen for an A B high tone stream. accompanied by a separate sea. Each example first presents the Ab target 4 times, followed by 12 repetitions of the full ABC pattern
you are to judge how easy it is to hear the A B high tone stream in the full pattern. We present 3 versions of this demonstration by varying the frequency, separation between tones A and B. You will hear first a large separation, then a medium one, then no separation.
Classroom B: So we'll just pause there for a second. So yeah, the way they're setting it up is brayman first presents 2 different pitches that are alternating, and then in the second sequence the same thing, but with another pitch. That's time with that with that second tone. So if you had to describe your perception
Classroom B: and and what was happening. And in your auditory processing there, what did you hear on a perceptual level?
Ashley Wray: Only 2 tones.
Classroom B: okay, only 2 tones in the in the first one, for sure. So what what do you mean by only 2 tones?
Ashley Wray: II felt like there were only 2 tones in the second one as well. So let's go. Let's go back and listen a little bit.
We present 3 versions of this demonstration by varying the frequency separation between tones A and B, you will hear first a large separation, then a medium one, then no separation.
Classroom B: Yeah. So that is just 2 tones right there.
Classroom B: And now, what we're trying to really be mindful of by Bragg's instructions is he's going to introduce a third tone. And and he's asking you to think about how easily you can sort of keep that phone as separate from that original alternating pattern. Do you perceive it as something that belongs to that same pattern, or something that is separate.
Classroom B: Ashley seems to be suggesting that she can't really hear it as separate, because you don't hear 2 tones. What are other people's perception about this.
Classroom B: Yeah. And so. And and I say, I get the same sort of perception there like I, for my brain is interpreting that added tone, as having its own sort of like. I think of it as having its own, like unique rhythmic pulse to it.
Classroom B: I like so my brain separates them up, but it sounds like myos is separating that one a little bit too
Classroom B: still kind of separate.
Classroom B: and that one to be sound like that was like quite easy to separate.
Classroom B: And again, all this happening here is that the those that original, A and B always altering, is just the the similarity in pitch
Classroom B: between those between those, the second tone and the and the added tone And as they become closer and closer together, we can still separate it out. But we are fairly good at separating.
Classroom B: but it becomes easier, as those things are are further and further opening up.
Classroom B: And and in some cases, you know, after his case in the first one I ended up perceiving it as just belonging to the same thing. So this is this is what what Reagan means by what you call stream segregation.
Classroom B: You know his ideas. And so if we have.
Classroom B: we're just measuring this, you know, frequency and time.
Classroom B: So he, he starts with those alternating tones, A, E, and then we have those added tones. C, right right now, what we're looking at is a fairly large frequency separation, and what most people attempt to perceive is that you have one pattern here.
Classroom B: and then a different pattern here. That's what he means already talking about streams, talking about the groupings of sounds that we're receiving, and the segregation part is how we separate
Classroom B: those 2 streams.
Classroom B: Now, if, instead.
Classroom B: these were extremely close together what are we gonna get? But we're most likely going to perceive in this case, based on that. Just all principle of similarity
Classroom B: is one stream and a different stream.
Classroom B: And that's sort of what Ashley was describing when it's like, well, it just still sounded like 2 tones, and because his auditory system was very strongly grouping
Classroom B: those, the the B tone, and the added C tone, based on their their perceptual similarity, perceiving them as if they belong to what sounds
Classroom B: for the second time. We won't go through the the third demonstration, but Franklin demonstrates that the same thing can happen with proximity. But in this case, because sound is inherently and necessarily a physical stimulus. That sort of occurs over time.
Classroom B: We go back to this alternating pattern.
Classroom B: You can separate them out a little bit.
Classroom B: So, for example, that the the added C tone might happen just a little bit. The onset will be a little bit before the second tone in the original sequence. And as this gets further and further away it's it's less and less likely to be grouped with that second tone in the original sequence. In this, in this case, talking about proximity in time
Classroom B: rather than than spatial proximity. So the the same general principles that organize our visual experience do seem to organize our auditory experience as well.
Classroom B: Questions about that thoughts, ideas.
Classroom B: I put a link to Bragman's website in in this week's so lesson in Populey. You can.
Classroom B: if you have a pretty high
Classroom B: look through some of those demonstrations, and play around with them a little bit, as that would be mindful what you're perceiving. As things change, there are. Audio is 41 of them
Classroom B: all again demonstrating these different organizational principles, and and in many cases what we could consider like auditory illusions. You know, we're we're sort of familiar with with optical, but these are auditorium.
Classroom B: you know, when you when you hear that sound is continuing through that blast of white noise. That's not what that we have to help. So it's
Classroom B: the conclusion some of the for me some of the coolest demonstrations on the site.
Classroom B: especially with a mind to sort of practical application. Our demonstrations based on sort of traditional Ugandan xylophone music
Classroom B: and the way that it's organized like the the way that you get a dial phone music in that particular historical tradition is played is 2 players on separate dial phones. And what's really interesting about it is
Classroom B: the the rhythmic pattern of each person is just continue with number. So every like. Each person would be playing continuous notes. But the 2 people walk.
Classroom B: So you get, you know, sort of a just an alternating pattern. And what's interesting about the way that organized music is as the the melody is played by the 2 players, sort of being in it out of each other. What you end up hearing is something that's much more complicated than just alternating
Classroom B: beats.
Classroom B: It sounds like, you know, but it sounds like there are certain accents that are that are happening within the different rhythmic structure. But in reality it's just great.
Classroom B: Of course, the people writing that music probably weren't doing so with auditory scene, analysis in mind.
Classroom B: But
Classroom B: the the end. Perceptual experience is much fisher and much more complicated than the actual visits that it would be produced
Classroom B: because of the way that our brain organizes that about information
Classroom B: worth checking out. Just just for
Classroom B: interesting character. So
Classroom B: questions, thoughts.
Classroom B: ideas.
Classroom B: Okay? So what we'll we'll do is, we'll move on to discussing some of the sort of sort of some of the findings in a lot of the originally we say
Classroom B: research that auditory of that and processing research is that have examined some of the key findings and demonstrations. It'll probably take us to time for a break and then we'll we'll turn
Classroom B: turn our minds over to to application up of some of these ids principles.
Classroom B: So we can. We can kind of group
Classroom B: auditory processing research into the 3 basic categories that are outlined in text the the ways in which we localize sound. So how we determine where a sound is coming from
Classroom B: the processing of sounds that are not speech. And then, of course, the the processing of speech. and of course, the processing of speech information is important and unique enough to sort of have it all
Classroom B: line of research distinguishing it from the broker
Classroom B: given. Given, how important language communication really is for us.
Classroom B: So some of the key findings if we start to whip these off when we're talking about localization, this sort of standard experimental framework is, sit down in a room. A sound is presented from a speaker somewhere in the room and your job is just to locate as possible, whereas
Classroom B: work fairly good. But there are some things that make it more difficult.
Classroom B: So, for example, we're much better at locating sounds on the horizontal.
Classroom B: So front and back, left and right compared to the vertical.
Classroom B: we're not great at identifying where sound comes from. If the the location is is above or below us.
Classroom B: We're also much better at identifying realistic sounds. So sounds that that move across space as compared to sounds that are stationary sounds that are what we call broadband, so realistic sounds, instead of pure tones. We're better at localizing
Classroom B: again, very likely, because these are.
Classroom B: This is more consistent with the sound that we tend to actually experience in our environment.
Classroom B: When when there is a sound, the objects tend to be moving rather stationary. and we? We have experience. We don't have experience with peer tones, because peer tones have to be synthesized and artificially created. They don't happen in the natural environment.
Classroom B: But here's how that are that are brought in and complicated
Classroom B: questions about that
Classroom B: research on non speech sounds tends now focus instead of localization. Sound is the sort of where question of auditory processing research on how we process various sounds tends to be more the identification and recognition of sounds. The question of what a sound is.
Classroom B: and
Classroom B: there there are a couple of different ways. We could do this. II alluded to earlier this other characteristic of sound timber or something
Classroom B: again. This is sort of like the the qualities of a sound that are not
Classroom B: volume and catch.
Classroom B: You know the the fact that a piano sounds different from a guitar, which sounds different from a prompt, if sounds different from a oboe. even if they're all playing the same pitch at the same volume they sound.
Classroom B: And again, part of that is based on the the structure of those upper harmonics that that they're placed above that that fundamentally
Classroom B: the the frequency of those upper harmonics. Doesn't that change? It's always that
Classroom B: ratio of the fundamental frequency but the relative intensity or volume of those upper harmonics differs from sound to sound. And that's that is not the entire story, but does provide us with a lot of that timber based. Information allows us to distinguish would be something like.
Classroom B: They have different frequencies, sorry, different intensities of those upper harmonic frequencies.
Classroom B: Let's say it's not the whole story. It's also because when we're talking about getting the acoustic properties of sound. 2 of the the other
Classroom B: terms that we need to be aware of are are
Classroom B: what that what that means in in more common terminology is the characteristics of the beginning and
second call.
Classroom B: So the attack is the onset of a sound.
Classroom B: For example, you know if I have. A wind instrument that has a relatively soft attack where the the sound happens more more gradually as compared to you know, a guitar, or something like that, where it's much more percussive onset.
Classroom B: the decay is the opposite of that. So it doesn't sound practically soft and properly.
Classroom B: And and so the combination of these upper harmonic patterns, combined with the attack and the key of the sound is.
Classroom B: that's sort of, you know, important bottom up information that allows us to distinguish and recognize different types of sense
Classroom B: research. Where you know the typical research on this is, you just present a bunch of sound and have people who identify them recognize them? But in some interesting research group them categorize them and demonstrating the importance of attack, and say, Hey, people tend to organize sounds, or judge them as more similar based on those characteristics.
Classroom B: And one of the examples from the text is like somebody like dangling their keys and somebody shaking. Okay, coins. We tend to group those as similar, not because of their upper harmonics, but because of the pattern of attacks that they host
Classroom B: our sound identification is also very strongly influenced by my top down processes. So one of the interesting studies in the tech is this weird demonstration that we're probably not aware of the fact that we do this. But we tend to associate the sounds on different shows with gender.
Classroom B: So they do weird experiments, whereas somebody's walking, where do is people will actually make fairly confident judgments about whether you know the the whether the person is is.
Classroom B: of course, they're making that doesn't based on just the the types of tubes that men and women tend to wear based on social expectations and data.
Classroom B: And we and we process with the fact that we're we're not very good at identifying an individual person of the sound
Classroom B: Satsar walk.
Classroom B: But we will make judgments about, you know, based on the type of people.
Classroom B: And then that third line of research again, probably one of the one of the more important functions of our auditory system is the process spoken language?
Classroom B: We're doing that right now. It's again something that we don't find. It's not hard for us to understand and interpret what somebody's saying. But again, this is why I think one of the clearest examples of just how efficient and effective or auditory system is because that
Classroom B: okay is not easy.
Classroom B: Original research on on speech processing usually aimed at sort of developing automated voice systems. We we do have. Now, we have, like transcription and speech to text software.
Classroom B: Zoom has it built in
Classroom B: based on your experiences with that type of software. How good, is it?
Classroom B: And I see, how do you shake your head? Possibly.
Classroom B: or that might have just been your camera? I think
Classroom B: it's up. It talks right
Annie Lewis: sorry I can say it has always come through
Annie Lewis: like on zoom, for example. Things that always come through super clear.
Classroom B: Yeah. And that often reflects in that transcription.
Classroom B: Ii know that, you know, going. If I look back on transcription of my classes, it usually doesn't write me back what I'm saying. Very well.
Classroom B: So they're they're getting better and better. But they they're still not great. They made a lot of errors. And and again, this is just a nice example of types of tasks that we are expert at.
Classroom B: That artificial systems tend to not be so great at and then the early research on auditory processing and and
Classroom B: recognition and interpretation of speech was initially quite optimistic.
Classroom B: The idea was difficult. I mean, there's going to follow sort of like Gibson. Ecological approach to idea was that well, there's going to be very clear information present in the actual sounds that people produce when they're speaking, that allow us to, for example, determine when one word starts in another, making
Classroom B: and use that to recognize information.
Classroom B: But that ends up not being the case. If you actually look at the spectrograms or or the the sound waves being produced when somebody speaks. When somebody's reading a sentence, there's actually, very rarely, an actual noticeable gap
Classroom B: or or stop and sound right? We we tend to speak quite fluidly.
Classroom B: and then making that more complicated. There often are stops in between the syllables of a word. So they're they're in some weird, counterintuitive way. There are generally more pauses in the sound.
Classroom B: within a word, that between.
Classroom B: so that that sort of that Gibson ecological approach idea, suggesting that the information is just there present in the stimulus for us to discover doesn't seem to hold the speaker.
Classroom B: but we don't have the difficulty parting out when one word solves or one begins right.
Classroom B: As long as you know, the language.
Classroom B: Sure. Has everyone had that experience of hearing somebody speak in unfamiliar language, and you can't even determine where it starts to begin.
Classroom B: This is why? Because that information is not readily available in the actual viscosity. a lot of research, with nothing, in fact, that when somebody is listening to an unfamiliar language even sounds
Classroom B: again because we're with without that familiarity without knowing the language. We aren't really able to ourselves. So that information
Classroom B: make it more complicated. The exact sound that people produce when they're. For example, if I had all the say the same sentence.
Classroom B: or even just the same word. The the characteristics of the sound wave being produced will differ substantially.
Classroom B: or if I just take one of you who would have you say the same word, the same sentence over and over again, there's gonna be variability.
Classroom B: But our auditory system can perceive it like well, as long as it's familiar.
Classroom B: largely taking advantage of the fact that while it's all consistent, there are overall statistical breakfast. whether it's each cell.
Classroom B: and our brains and auditory systems are excellent at picking up on and learning
Classroom B: those fiscal regularities
Classroom B: begins in childhood, and we're exposed to to speech starts in our environment, we learn a very quickly, very
Classroom B: just like non-speech sounds. We're also heavily influenced by top-down processes.
Classroom B: And and this seems like like this
Classroom B: in in the context of speech, recognition, and and effective communication. The the influence of expectation, especially the influence of coherence
Classroom B: of the individual words being spoken, seem like an almost a necessary component of our speech processing because we just we live in sort of
Classroom B: figuratively and literally noisy environment. So it's figurative in the sense that when we talk about perceptual information being noisy, we, there's a lot of information that we have to parse out for sound and auditory processing. That literally means that it's noisy. As well
Classroom B: gotta make sure I get a sentence right. There's an excellent demonstration of this in the textbook.
Classroom B: So this I mean, this is an excellent demonstration of the the role of transmit, engagement and and sentence coherence
Classroom B: in how we perceive speech that so the way that this this experiment works is, you'll sit down in a lab. You'll hear a sentence such as we found something eel on the and then other paxil or shoe or table, and that blank in that blank email is just sort of the the slight burst of
Classroom B: I
Classroom B: now the with some of the interesting findings. First of all, we tend not to even notice that white noise.
Classroom B: Because our brains are in that filling in that visiting person, too.
Classroom B: but by changing the final word it changes what people hear. So by changing the final word of the sentence to Axel, orange, shoe, or table that's going to alter how we perceive this word.
Classroom B: So if if we, if final word is axle, what are we likely to perceive that word as the
Ashley Wray: wheel.
Classroom B: If it's if it's an orange appeal.
Classroom B: the shoe heel.
Classroom B: there's a tail eel. and people will systematically and verifiably hear those different words just based on essentially like how well like, which which word makes the most sense in the context of the sentence.
Classroom B: So that's that's an influence, you know, that's part of the top down expectation based processing. And then the other interesting aspect of this finding is that it's so automatic that we don't notice
Classroom B: that the information wasn't there. We filled in so quickly and so effortlessly that it just sounds like someone said to feel it on the axle.
Classroom B: easy, effortless, automatic, and as a result, often unconscious
Classroom B: questions, thoughts.
Classroom B: We'll we'll take a bit of a breather shortly when we come back.
Classroom B: We're going to. Now we've established some of the basic theoretical ideas, basic finding basic frameworks. And then we'll we'll turn to some of the the applications.
Classroom B: the the chapter is organized in an interesting way. It covers, as you probably know, it covers a whole range of applications, but doesn't really
Classroom B: forever. Yep.
Classroom B: but we'll we'll get some conversation going and get some, Robert going to explore those things into that.
Classroom B: We'll also send some time discussing some of your thoughts on the reading response which is within a context, it's not really directly covered with the the chapter of a requirement for brainstorming and and extrapolation. So we'll get some opportunity to discuss some of the ideas that you had. And and
Classroom B: yeah, then then dive into some of the other applications based on, based on what you, as as a class, sort of found most most interesting and potentially important
Classroom B: that make sense
Classroom B: cool. So it's it's about 9 40. Let's take 15 and come back at 5, 2,
awesome.
Classroom B: Okay? So just just right, framing and context for for the recording. And it's coming out of a a discussion of
Classroom B: applications of monetary processing for traffic control and other contacts. So what were some of the key points that came out of that discussion.
Ashley Wray: I don't know if someone in class wants to. Mayo, or is it Iman, is that
Ashley Wray: Emon? Okay, Maya, or
Ashley Wray: touch on what we talked about all our answers were kind of similar. We just kind of elaborated on different points.
Ashley Wray: Does anyone else want to go? Or, you guys mind if I keep chatting away.
Ashley Wray: I think you have the green light. So we talked about
Ashley Wray: combining different tones and frequencies of varying lengths so touching on
Ashley Wray: what we discussed about earlier in class pitch, color, hue, brightness, volume, combining
Ashley Wray: tones with those different variables to be to create a distinct
Ashley Wray: tone that would trigger protocol.
Ashley Wray: a specific protocol for air traffic controllers. And then I kind of touched on how
Ashley Wray: pure, simple tones aren't easily recognizable. So we don't see a lot of those
Ashley Wray: in these applications, because, as you said, they don't occur naturally in our natural environment. So we're not exposed to them.
Ashley Wray: another topic we touched on was combining visual with auditory cues
Ashley Wray: to enhance the distinctiveness
Ashley Wray: and having them separate, like the the auditory, originate from different from somewhere else in the
Ashley Wray: room or control panel, or whatever, as well as where the location of the different
Ashley Wray: visual icons spatially separated.
Ashley Wray: and then We also touched on
Ashley Wray: coordination. So assigning like a red to indicate a critical urgency, whereas
Ashley Wray: yellow or green not so much. hmm!
Ashley Wray: Help me out here if I'm
Classroom B: so it's yeah. You've got it off quite a few things there. So it's start to organize on this. So one of I'm one of the biggest things that you were talking about. There is like.
Classroom B: that's religion
Classroom B: able to distinguish between different warning sounds. Because, of course, you can't distinguish between a set of sounds.
Classroom B: So
Classroom B: as as we're starting to organize this, and we'll put the, you know, we'll bring this back when
Classroom B: when it becomes relevant. Yeah. So
Classroom B: some of the things you were talking about. So I mean, the this idea of of sort of stream segregation from
Classroom B: auditory scene analysis is is gonna be important. Right?
Classroom B: So this is this is kind of what what you were saying when I said, this is your responses. This idea of like having having pitches that are separate from that are. There's a language that you're sort of using.
Classroom B: Because I'm linking this to this idea of street segregation and auditory scene analysis. Because the reality of an air traffic control scenario is that it's very unlikely there's ever going to be one auditory signal in the environment
Classroom B: out of time. Right? There gonna be multiple sounds happening
Classroom B: because the the tasks that are having control. You'll see the chapter for next week is is essentially a a process
Classroom B: of of needing to to interpret it and receive a great deal of information.
Classroom B: So
Classroom B: because much of that information is auditory. The the importance of making those sounds from each other is critical and we we can and and ought to do that based on some of these principles of of, you know, grouping
Classroom B: by my proximity, similarity and things like that
Classroom B: you were saying something about
Classroom B: you mentioned spatial organization of sounds. Can you just expand on that a little bit?
Ashley Wray: So a sound coming from
Ashley Wray: different points on our horizontal plane to keep different left side of the room.
Classroom B: Yeah, let's let's explore that idea a little bit. I think there's some interesting stuff in there.
Classroom B: So
Classroom B: yeah, let's let's let's break through what the fix of you have maybe have different sounds coming from different locations.
Classroom B: you know, different different speakers within the display or interface that aircraft controller is using.
Classroom B: so what? What I want to the additional information that I want here. So
Classroom B: what
Classroom B: what do we sort of see as as the purpose of separating those sounds out spatially
Annie Lewis: make them more distinct and easier to.
Annie Lewis: That's like this.
Classroom B: partially to his idea of that. And the way that we can kind of interpret this is introducing redundant
Classroom B: identification. Right? So you can.
Classroom B: if we, you know. Let's put. Let's bring this to a different context. So I wanted the
Classroom B: one of the key principles of good design, for, like visual.
Classroom B: the the display quantitative information is that same thing that the redundant identifying characteristics. For example, say, you have like a standard map that has.
Classroom B: we'll do a bad first, you know, if you have, say, like 2 different, say, this is data from classroom one
Classroom B: and class 2.
Classroom B: So you have like a standard line graph.
Classroom B: you know, sort of making up data here that represents something
Classroom B: so like one common way that you'll distinguish between 2 groups of of data graph is something like a a different shape. So a square to represent one group, a triangle group. But this is not
Classroom B: good graph design what you should be doing instead.
Yes.
Classroom B: but
Classroom B: it's something more like this, where you have multiple indicators, a lot of people who visually discriminate between those those different groupings or sources. So you know, a combination of color shape, fine type.
Classroom B: again, building redundancy. And so there are multiple ways to identify it, and we can apply that exact same principle to auditory discrimination. So we can distinguish, for example, something by by pitch.
Classroom B: I
Classroom B: volume. We probably don't want to do, because it's going to make things more or less likely to be noticed. But you can, as you're suggesting also, distinguish them based on their location.
Classroom B: Okay, yes. There's a bunch of stuff in in Zoom there.
Classroom B: So that seems to be sort of the the key purpose of spatial organization that you're talking about. There is one other potential benefit that comes to mind for me. We'll see if we can. We can brainstorm through it. What might be another reason that you might want to. I've have
Classroom B: spatial distinction or a spatial organization of different sounds.
Classroom B: This this was I think, based on my understanding what actually was saying. Another point that you you identify as as a group that you want to also incorporate visual information. And I think the way you're describing it.
Classroom B: you know, using auditory signals to draw attention to visual. Is that is that correct reading of what you were saying.
Ashley Wray: yeah, they kind of go
Ashley Wray: together.
Classroom B: Now.
Classroom B: visual information is going to be presented in different locations. Because again, there's a lot of information often presented on screens for different interfaces. The facial organization that sounds can help facilitate that process of drawing visual attention to the correct location where that visual information
Classroom B: for that data
Classroom B: you'd ideally want those things be mapped right? So if the sound, if there's going to be visual information presented on a screen on the left. There's going to be an auditory signal that
Classroom B: it's meant to draw your attention to that visual information. It should be spatially location right.
Classroom B: That would you would presume likely. Be correct that if you can, you know, based on the package you're doing that
Classroom B: as as you were mentioning within the horizontal plane. The the sound comes from that location that's going to draw our attention to that visual information which is likely relevant with some sense of urgency.
Classroom B: That's one of the other challenging aspects of air traffic control. Things need to be done quickly in many cases.
Classroom B: You are identifying that using realistic sounds is is a better idea
Classroom B: drawing on on this research, that our our auditory processing in general just tend to be better with sounds that are familiar, that more consistent with our active environment, so pure homes is not a good idea.
Classroom B: There's some some evidence that this is this is discussed a little bit in the the warning sounds section of the textbook chapter.
Classroom B: but part of that also sort of involves dynamic signals.
Classroom B: So sounds sounds that change
Classroom B: that that provides us with much more information that we can use to just distinguish between different sounds. Right? So you you are limited in what to do if it's just single steady tones
Classroom B: again. We don't want them to vary in about this, because
Classroom B: don't want to. Of course, we don't want to present a client. those are less likely to detect them. But if you're just having a single set of towns, and you're
Classroom B: Barry the pitch
Classroom B: or if you're using realistic sound, very the the timber.
Classroom B: And you're you're gonna be limited in that. Because if you're then in this this game of making sure that you're splitting them into separate auditory streams.
Classroom B: you start to run out of. You'd basically just have to run out of room pretty quickly. But if you can, for example, use different patterns of already tones things that discrete, discrete be alternate between different phones. Perhaps it was a gliding between 2 notes.
Classroom B: Yeah. So there's definitely a lot of research on on sound discrimination that we can draw
Classroom B: one
Classroom B: one other relevant point that might come from the chapter. so there was. There was a section in there. I think it might even be the first section of like the application of research processing.
Classroom B: Some of the things that
Classroom B: some of the auditory information that people build into like computer interfaces.
Classroom B: So the the chapter was talking about things like icons they call earcards.
Classroom B: Now at the very end. They also talked about the sort of interesting timing of Spearcon
Classroom B: where you have speech information that's presented extremely rapidly and surprisingly. We're
Classroom B: pretty good at
Classroom B: recognizing that information. If it's presented like far faster than the typical rates of speech that will identify the potential built add in here is one of the other challenges is they're discriminating between different sounds. But there's also then recognizing
Classroom B: what type of information is being conveyed
Classroom B: right now, I think you're you're solution of drawing attention to visual cues does begin to solve that problem.
Classroom B: Because visual visual information can probably be much more directly onto problem that falls. So, for example, if if 2 planes are on a flight path that's going to bring them
Classroom B: too close in proximity for safety. That's really easy to display visually right
Classroom B: icons of planes visually close or far away from each other. So if you could just draw or use auditory email to draw attention to that information, then that, of course, does start to solve problems.
Classroom B: But it does increase the amount of information that people need to attend to, so there could be some benefit in building even more redundancy.
Classroom B: If there was a signal, for example, some sort of speech-based, rapid, speech-based signal that identified. You know that that plants are coming into close proximity
Classroom B: research on some of the insights from other contexts, other applications, and try to apply them to other other places.
Classroom B: Drawing that drawing attention to visual cues does does quite a bit start to solve some of that problem.
Classroom B: that what it ultimately speaks to is the need to identify
Classroom B: the sensory modality that nests conveys the information made. And as you started to articulate in this case, it's often visual, but we can use auditory signals to draw attention to that visual information.
Classroom B: Okay, Sharon, saying that there's certain natural aptitudes for for pilots and air traffic controllers. II would push back. And I'm not. I'm not sure that really gets into the tricky grounds of anything like that, because I mean any any employment context to to evaluate people based on their aptitude to perform the job? Right? That's not a that's not a very habit.
Classroom B: Okay? So what were what were some of the other. So we have the the all the at issues around, sound discrimination, the incorporation of visual views. Were there other points?
Ashley Wray: We briefly discussed other occupations. Aside from control
Ashley Wray: controlling that
Ashley Wray: would kind of utilize similar practices like anything in a medical field with heart rate monitors or kind of occupations that have people's lives.
Classroom B: Yeah, yeah. And that's that's a, that's an important insight. So yeah, we have these same types of things and then often, you know, sort of urgency
Classroom B: in in things like medical settings.
Classroom B: And you you do get a lot of the major issues. So what I mean one of the
Classroom B: many critical causes of things like medical errors that often have have very dramatic consequences. Is inability to properly interpret.
Classroom B: what? What is often cool
Classroom B: dozens of different machines and interfaces which creates this very sort of unfamiliarity? Because from shift to shift
Classroom B: the the tools and
Classroom B: interfaces that people use change.
Ashley Wray: You touched on that as well because the text textbook mentions how the technology is ever changing with air traffic controllers. So the signals are often changing. How do they account for that like? Is there training for new technology, or is it just a matter of getting exposed to it a certain amount of times, and then it becoming
Ashley Wray: and
Classroom B: training. Whether or not
Classroom B: is an open question
Classroom B: and and then, whether or not those new technologies are using these good design principles
Classroom B: more often than not. No.
Classroom B: there are some, I mean. So there are. There are definitely there is some incorporation of psychological research into how to best design these types of signals. And they do talk about a lot of those those policies and recommendations. We talk about a lot of the things that you identify. As
Classroom B: so again, down discrimination is one of the
Classroom B: for example, there are general policies, procedures not great.
Classroom B: The minimal separation between pitch
Classroom B: that that people that that you have to build into a system to. They get different signals. But they don't go to that extent that you've gone to. My incorporating redundant information corporate
Classroom B: a lot of dynamic aspects of sounds incorporating the spatial organization.
Classroom B: So they? They take some of those steps. They don't take a or we don't take enough steps.
Classroom B: Now, there's some other stuff that's that.
Classroom B: This type of research. Can
Classroom B: one other aspect that we haven't talked about is the is, let's
Classroom B: less relevant to auditory processing and more relevant to more theory than 5 decision-making. But 1, one major issue
Classroom B: contacts and things like that. Is the reliability
Classroom B: of warning. Say, bills. The the reality is that in a lot of cases. Many warning signals produce a lot of false alarms.
Classroom B: No. Any. Anybody who who has experience with smoke detectors experience is also worms all the time.
Classroom B: But the problem is that when you have a unreliable warning signals that produce a high rate of fossil bar that leads people to have lower trust in those warning signals and often ignore them.
Classroom B: It's kind of like a
Classroom B: that was what happens is that if you are ignoring the signal. Eventually, that signal is is actually indicating problem that ignoring don't solve the problem
Classroom B: in the context of air traffic control that could be a plane crash.
Classroom B: The context of the medical setting, not providing urgent treatment to somebody. Use it.
Classroom B: And it's it's not even just a matter of
Classroom B: ensuring that people attend to every signal, because the reason that in these, like high urgency, high complexity settings people do tend to ignore unreliable porting signals is because they have a bunch of other potential sources of information competing for their attention. So we have one that tends to also are well. I have these 3 other warning signals happening simultaneously. I'm not going to prioritize this one because it tends to be problem.
Classroom B: So this building, higher and higher reliability signals is important as well
Classroom B: based on some of the stuff that Ashley was saying. We also seem to sort of go a little bit into some of the content from from next week talking about working memory and that is relevant, because in these very high complexity scenarios they're cognitively demanding. So they tend to exceed memory capacity.
Classroom B: One of the often ignored implications. For that is the the timing of warning. So one general design recommendation that's built into most aircraft control situations. Now, is that warning signals is actually somewhat counterintuitive. That warning signals automatically heard off
Classroom B: after a period of time after, and a relatively short period of time. It's counterintuitive, because you might think well, you don't want it to automatically pair it off because they're then creating a window in which the person might miss that signal.
Classroom B: But because air traffic controllers tend to be while you're raining, they tend not to miss those signals. Having to turn off automatically is is an attempt to reduce working memory requirements, because if the person has to turn the signal off themselves, that just one more thing than that.
Classroom B: So usually the the way that they're designed now is that there'll be a warning signal that after a few seconds will turn off allowing the aircraft control, or do, instead of attending to turn that that signal off.
Classroom B: doing what the signal is helping them to do
Classroom B: any other points that came up.
Ashley Wray: and with.
Ashley Wray: So we were touching on careers. We kind of
Ashley Wray: dabbled into other scenarios where it's not. There aren't people's lives at risk. I think my mentioned phone notifications. So you can tell the difference in tones from an email to a text to a Facebook notification or whatever. And then I wanna step further and this happens often when I'm laying in bed and my phone vibrates, I can tell the difference between the different vibration
Ashley Wray: sounds for different notifications as well. So if it's an email, and it's 11 pm, I'm not checking my phone. But if it's a text message at that time, usually
Ashley Wray: it's a little more important. So I'll check my phone. At that point.
Classroom B: I get a bunch of Monday text messages at 3 4 in the morning.
Ashley Wray: Oh, wow.
Classroom B: yeah, yeah, that's there are applications in the app. What we could sort of describe as these, more money.
otherwise. not like
Classroom B: about like. So
Classroom B: so these use you call that principals short user experience.
Classroom B: And then, yeah, these things certainly have incorporating these different phones to the devices
Classroom B: we didn't so add up
Classroom B: and and sometimes sometimes it's not even like purely auditory processing. For example, there's evidence that incorporating auditory
Classroom B: say that
Classroom B: keyboard on a screen tends to increase our our typing speed and accuracy.
Classroom B: incorporating sound, and the 2 different any options that allows using with between them. Even if we're like primarily relying on a bit of information.
Classroom B: There's some studies identified in the
Classroom B: in the textbook chapter that that know that presenting that auditory information here, cons, they're referring to is in that navigation people are able to complete that faster using fewer
Classroom B: keystrokes and and navigation movements.
Classroom B: So they they do incorporating these auditors. It goes unique.
Classroom B: And that's often the that's often the goal. That sort of idea of human behavior
Classroom B: are interacting with our married devices, which are, of course, now.
Classroom B: But it's making them more efficient, more.
Ashley Wray: Annie also brought up another point that hopefully you can help us to understand a little better. She mentioned when she was a child. There was a I think it was a story you said, that gave off a specific like high pitched frequency to deter children from being around.
Ashley Wray: But then, as you reach a certain age, you can't detect that frequency anymore. Does that like carry forward? And throughout our whole lives, like, do we become less sensitive to certain frequencies as we age.
Classroom B: Yeah, that I mean that part. Yes it.
Classroom B: using it to
Classroom B: using it to like prevent young children and adolescents for women, certain areas of call we wouldn't work well, because.
Classroom B: you know, we tend not to experience hearing loss on average. But it does it. It is absolutely the case that it does.
Classroom B: as you identify entire frequency, that we have
Classroom B: trouble hearing and proceeding as we as we get or
Classroom B: and that's largely just a natural consequence of the the way that the year is structured. That the
Classroom B: air cells that that tend to
Classroom B: proceeded with higher pitches, or just because of their structure, they they
Classroom B: tend to be damaged more easily.
Ashley Wray: If you're a musician and you use those like, you're exposed to those frequencies. More does that become less the case?
Classroom B: That's a good question. Not really because, the the change in frequency, like the differences in in sensitivity to frequencies that occur with Tj. Are are much more bought up. It's it's very much like a it's it's damage to the receptors in in the
Classroom B: that. Top down. Experience like that can't really help all that much. It's it's an actual like physical detection. If you
Classroom B: and and like that type of understanding
Classroom B: especially on on those bottom up processes and and some top down process. Well, primarily bottom up. I think that's that's what's allowed us to develop curing
Classroom B: cobbler implies I'd like to be
Classroom B: amplified. But now they're so.
Classroom B: And you know, implants are specific enough to not just not just help with people who are aging and experiencing
hearing
Classroom B: airmen, but can be used to allow people who are otherwise entirely deaf to.
Classroom B: because it basically stands as a an artificial version of the cochlea the year
Classroom B: and send neural signals to your brain. That is, interpreted
Classroom B: one of the other major areas where it becomes critically cause at least, that.
Classroom B: like reading through some of those applications, some of them seem like
Classroom B: some of them at their first glance, might seem like this
Classroom B: seems like a bit of a weird thing. So I'm interested in hearing your perception of that. That section on on sonification of data. So, taking quantitative information and presenting it
Classroom B: zoom monitoring information either above as opposed to, or in addition to visual information like when we when we display visual, I don't want to display quantitative information to people. We tend to do it visual, right
Classroom B: like that. But there's this sort of
Classroom B: more recent efforts to look at ways to represent
Classroom B: quantitative data auditorily, instead of visually
Classroom B: based off, based on reading of the the which was admittedly fairly limited. What are your sort of thoughts talk process.
Ashley Wray: I feel like it wouldn't be able to hold my attention for as long
Ashley Wray: like I wouldn't auditory. It's not there in front of you
Ashley Wray: to analyze and and compare.
Ashley Wray: It just comes and goes.
Classroom B: Yeah, so there's a way you're highlighting. There is the the time-based feature of that. And and in some ways I think you're correct.
Classroom B: That might make it difficult to to maintain attention and and refer back to things and understand. Understand. Understand what they're presenting.
Classroom B: Interestingly, that's also one of the reasons that it's increasingly popular in some
Classroom B: fields
Classroom B: so so some of the like. Some of the fields that use the sort of capability are examining things that unfold over time and then, and in that case presenting it as sound is gonna be very beneficial, because sound is something that dynamic changes over time.
Classroom B: So like it's it's an increasingly common method like astrophysics
Classroom B: in representing, like the the development of stars and things like that.
Classroom B: But I certainly like as we. I certainly do agree with it. You're sort of
Classroom B: reluctance might be the word. I'm sure there's better word. But talking in mind right now, because I feel as well it's like a part of that's probably because, like, we're so used to
Classroom B: interpreting data visually like, that's what we're used to doing.
Classroom B: So it seems like.
Classroom B: Wow, why do I now need to learn to interpret data presented as sound.
Ashley Wray: I guess other people like different people, have different learning styles. I personally know I'm a very visual person. If there's a graph or or handwritten notes tied to something. I tend to retain that information better. But people like musicians who can differentiate notes from
Ashley Wray: other specific notes from others which I cannot do. Maybe they would have.
Ashley Wray: Maybe the auditory representation would be would resonate with them more.
Classroom B: It's it's there could be some individual differences here.
Classroom B: yeah, and that that does start to move into. I think the
Classroom B: probably the most important application which which admittedly took a while to
Classroom B: your lies. But one of the one of the important applications of presenting information. Examining ways to present information
Classroom B: formats is, I have 2 colleagues. One of them is one of Aaron Maloney. The other is named Tyler Andor.
Classroom B: Do those research is math anxiety or searches memory. They're both blind.
Classroom B: They can't. protests data visually.
Classroom B: If you present a graph.
Classroom B: They can't see it. So it doesn't help them.
Classroom B: And typically, you know, like
Classroom B: accessibility guidelines and standards kind of
Classroom B: queer verbal description of the graph as well.
Classroom B: If you can
Classroom B: phonify data.
Classroom B: then this provides a more direct way for somebody who has visual impairments
Classroom B: to process that information.
Classroom B: And that's that's a huge application of of research on process to help people who don't have
Classroom B: the ability to process visual information.
Classroom B: You know, the textbook outline these really sort of cutting edge technologies for even even navigation.
Classroom B: where you have a sort of like relying on on from the environment, sort of like a infrared scan of the environment which then
Classroom B: produces different sounds indicating Co location and proximity of their contacts. And the research shows that, of course, like initially, no sound or
Classroom B: but people can learn to use them over time. and we rely on the on the plasticity of our brain, and people who otherwise can't use
Classroom B: other. What would typically be visual information can take that visual information translated into auditory information and potentially use it to navigate their environment. But no, they can't see
Classroom B: in the Liberals have to vote.
Classroom B: Good.
Excellent!
Classroom B: Yeah. My other great example, which are right now, that's a signal to somebody that it's it's either safe across or not safe across.
Classroom B: And there's a there's the need for quite a bit of research to
Classroom B: And then, you know, often an area of user experience research that can be ignored. Because, of course, people are going to typically research
Classroom B: prototypical standard person. But there is a need for this type of web search that examines how to best use auditory information for people who don't have access to visual information.
Classroom B: Anybody ever ever used a a screen, reader.
Classroom B: I've tried, but I don't really like it. So I know it's crazy, right? So II recommend at some point like going and just downloading a screen, reader. If you're on a
Classroom B: and I think if you're on a drawn
Classroom B: standard, one is called Voiceover.
Classroom B: and they're they're, you know, free to download and install. There are papers, but those are the 2 free ones that are
Classroom B: typically well linked. I think there's a and so actually, what don't you like about it. and I suspect it's gonna be the same stuff that I don't like about it.
Ashley Wray: I don't know if it's the pace. It just doesn't sound natural like, I can listen to a podcast no problem. But if it's a screen reader, it's like an automated voice.
Ashley Wray: maybe it goes too slow. I don't know exactly what it is.
Classroom B: Yeah, so it goes. The artificial part is interesting. You say it's too slow, because for me, the problem is that it's just. It's auditory information overloaded.
Classroom B: I think if you download it, if you download one and then play around with Google, they'll you'll find likely that it's just like there's so much there. But then, if you if you watch somebody who has experience with screen reader, use it they they that speed is important, cause they they don't want to
Classroom B: laboriously go through
Classroom B: for that option on a website they will navigate through extremely quickly.
Classroom B: They can rely on some of that. That's ability. We have more or speech recognition. Where the people who have experience is a screen reader can just blast through things
Classroom B: and recognize how you know how many works, how to navigate through a website, how to navigate through it very, very quickly. but as somebody without
Classroom B: experience for at least in my perspective, it becomes just immediately overwhelming.
Classroom B: Yeah. So it's important for us to be able to, you know, discriminate between different sound homes and identify their needs.
Classroom B: Whether what they're indicating to us signals is
Classroom B: much more important if that is the information which are exclusively reliable.
Classroom B: Basic
have that visual information as as a scaffold or a starting point.
Classroom B: Then the the more effective sounds identify and act accordingly.
Classroom B: that's something that that's sort of needed.
Ashley Wray: I think it also depends on what it is that you're screen reading. Like, I use example of A, podcast was probably bad idea, like bad example, maybe, like an audio book, would be a better example if I'm reading A. If if the authors reading an audio book, I can definitely follow along a lot easier than if I'm screen reading content from a textbook like I've tried to do that to save time in the past, but it just ends up being worse, because I have to reread the whole chapter or section because I didn't.
Ashley Wray: I didn't grasp what was being said. I guess.
Classroom B: okay, yeah. And okay, so that that provides some clarifications. I think that might be by the.
Classroom B: we are just like it for for office or reasons. Yeah, you're you're talking about like using using screeners to read the text specifically.
Classroom B: And yeah, and that is a channel kind of slow and artificial pedal, weird pages. And I'm talking about more the process of just using auditory information to like navigate a device
Classroom B: here, why don't we? Why don't we just take take a peek.
Classroom B: start to share something here.
Classroom B: So let's say, we're on a website here, and with open up.
Classroom B: Nv. Well, remind closed welcome to Nv. Welcome to Nv. DA welcome to Nvda, Ok. Government of Canada. Google search. Google chrome, Evan
Classroom B: circuit, canada.so clickable. Main landmark. canada.ca. Home heading level 3, Canada dot, CAHD, TPS. Slash, slash, double E navigation. K.
Aye.
Classroom B: We imagine that we're trying to switch to basic banner landmark list with one item for onse link
search, landmark, search. Kent search button navigation lent sign in link
main landmark list with a I
Classroom B: yeah. So you if you could try to imagine navigating through a website like this using that screen, reader, and like, if you want to really get experience through with your eyes closed. Ii
Classroom B: or how to use these things, you know I open it up, and we immediately got bombarded with auditory information.
Classroom B: But so, if if designed properly.
Classroom B: Then then you have ways to like people become very effective at using these things.
Classroom B: You'd imagine how frustrating would be if they were designed poorly if they didn't follow good good design principles based on, based on auditory processing and speech communication.
Classroom B: Jaren say, the intensity received at Myel's voice to
Classroom B: to read, for? Yeah, you get interesting stuff now where you can with artificial intelligence, you get mimic. Somebody's voice through a screen here.
Classroom B: sure, I close. And Mvta, so that don't get really overwhelmed. When I
Classroom B: when I use my computer again.
Classroom B: there we go.
Classroom B: So quite a few potential applications.
Classroom B: especially from a from an accessibility standpoint, it becomes not really noted that much
Classroom B: beyond beyond navigation.
Classroom B: Like increasingly important as we as as a society, we start to become more cognizant
Classroom B: of of the variety of of accessibility have. We'll probably see more of this this research focus on
Classroom B: things like using auditory information that'll help
Classroom B: other thoughts, questions.
Classroom B: ideas. points of discussion.
Classroom B: Well, I'm I'm going to provide some feedback on the reading responses. Sometimes. Afternoon when we come back next week, we're going to broadly look
Classroom B: psychological concept of working memory
Classroom B: and and look at a few applications not not quite the sort of like survey of a wide range of applications covered
Classroom B: this chapter but a few cases where we'll have an opportunity to know more depth so we'll come to the idea of air traffic control focus for a lot of.
Classroom B: or memory demand rather than the
Classroom B: role of auditory processing.
Classroom B: Look at that
Classroom B: that are sort of more common, like our ability to
asks.
Classroom B: and then it'll get a role that working every place in those types of things. And then even the the you'll know that the reading response, prompt is now more focused at the application of working their research in just your own personal life. More, some of that that applies to a specific context.
Classroom B: I
Classroom B: policy recommendations and things like that.
Classroom B: But that's that's the plan.
Classroom B: If you need anything. Obviously, you know exactly how to reach me.
Classroom B: Everyone have an awesome afternoon.
Ashley Wray: Thank you.