Hearing the Right Way

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Monique Thompson May 29, 2012 Effective Speaking Hearing the Right Way “Psychoacoustics is the study of the perception of sound” (Joshua Leads). This perception includes how a sound is heard, and the psychological and physiological responses to a sound (Leads). Through the study of psychoacoustics, auditory illusions, much like an optic illusion for the ear, were created to test how humans perceive various sounds. Diana Deutsch, A professor of psychology at University of California San Diego, has created many auditory illusions that prove everyone hears sound differently. More specifically, right-handed people hear differently than left-handed people. In 1973, Deutsch discovered the Octave Illusion (University of California San Diego). The Illusion works by taking two tones an octave apart and alternating them at a rate of four per second (USCD). This “sequence is played over headphones to both ears simultaneously, except that when the right ear receives the high tone the left ear receives the low tone, and vice versa” (Alfredo Brancucci). When this test is performed on right handed people, the high tone is in the right headphone, while the lower tone is in the left. When the headphones are switched, the high tone remains on the right and the low tone on the left. Left-handed people hear a variety of things. Some hear the lower tone in the right and the high tone in the left; some hear three to four tones. There is an intensity aspect to the octave illusion according to a study done by Ranil R. Sonnadara and Laural J.

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