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February 20, 2008

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.

—Vaughan.

Posted at February 20, 2008 06:00 PM

Comments

John B says:

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.

Comment posted at February 20, 2008 09:51 PM

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