Five auditory illusions

In one of its rare fits of generosity, New Scientist has put a feature online that demonstrates five cool auditory illusions.

Possibly the freakiest, is psychologist Diana Deutsch’s illusion called ‘Phantom Words’. For me at least, I began by a hearing certain phrase, only to hear it transform over time into something else.

The ‘temporal induction of speech’ illusion is a wonderful example of how our brain fills in missing information better when there’s sound rather than silence in the way.

All of them are well-worth checking out and accompany this week’s special issue on the psychology and neuroscience of music, all of which is sadly behind a pay wall.

Link to NewSci ‘five great auditory illusions’.
Link to music special issue table of contents.

One thought on “Five auditory illusions”

  1. Hi There. I’ve been subscribing to the mindhacks feed for a few months now, great stuff!
    I can remember hearing all those auditory illusions on a CD that came with a book. I’m not too sure which one but it might have been Diane Deutch’s ‘The psychology of music’. I read lot on the topic while writing a thesis called ‘A Study of the Effects of Acoustic Phenomena and Their Possible Use in Multimedia. Available here: http://www.johnbraine.com/music/words/thesis.html . I didn’t cover as much on auditory illusions as I originally hoped to though.
    Regards
    J.

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