CHAPTER 12 - Hearing and the Environment

Question 1

How is auditory space described in terms of three coordinates?

Question 2

What is the basic difference between determining the location of a sound source and determining the location of a visual object?

Question 3

Describe the binaural cues for localization. Indicate the frequencies and directions relative to the listener for which the cues are effective

Question 4

Describe the spectral cue for localization

Question 5

What happens to auditory localization when a mold is placed in a person’s ear? How well can a person localize sound once he or she has adapted to the mold? What happens when the mold is removed after the person has adapted to it?

Question 6

Describe the Jeffress model, and how neural coding for localization differs for birds and for mammals

Question 7

Describe how auditory localization is organized in the cortex. What is the evidence that A1 is important for localization?

Question 8

What are the “what” and “where” auditory pathways? How are they related to the anterior and posterior belt areas?

Question 9

What is the difference between listening to sound outdoors and indoors? Why does listening indoors create a problem for the auditory system?

Question 10

What is the precedence effect, and what does it do for us perceptually?

Question 11

What are some basic principles of architectural acoustics that have been developed to help design concert halls?

Question 12

Describe some of the techniques used to manipulate the acoustics of some modern concert halls

Question 13

What is auditory scene analysis, and why is it “problem” for the auditory system?

Question 14

What is simultaneous grouping?

Question 15

Describe the following types of information that help solve the simultaneous grouping problem: location, onset synchrony, timbre, pitch, and harmonicity

Question 16

What is sequential grouping?

Question 17

Describe how the following are related to the sequential grouping problem: auditory stream segregation, the scale illusion, auditory continuity, and experience

Question 18

Describe why we can say that the principles of auditory scene analysis involve prediction

Question 19

Describe the ways that (a) vision dominates hearing and (b) hearing dominates vision

Question 20

Describe how visual and auditory receptive fields can overlap. What is the function of this overlap?

Question 21

What is echolocation, as applied to blind people?

Question 22

How does echolocation affect the brain?

Question 23

Describe the experiment in which brain activity in the superior temporal gyrus in the temporal lobe was measured when listening to a story and when reading a story. What does the result of this experiment demonstrate about what this brain area is responding to?