Gestalt grouping principles explain how the ear streams alternating tones

Evidence

In a further experiment, Deutsch (1975) played an ascending and descending C major scale simultaneously with alternate notes being switched between the two ears as shown in the lower part of Figure 5.13. The most commonly perceived response is also shown in the figure. Once again, the high notes tend to be heard in the right ear and the low notes in the left ear, resulting in a snippet of a C major scale being heard in each ear. Such effects are known as “grouping” or “streaming,” and by way of explanation, Deutsch invokes some of the grouping principles of the Gestalt school of psychology known as “good continuation,” “proximity” and “similarity.” — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1620

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines grouping/streaming and connects it to the Gestalt school’s principles — useful terminology anchoring.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s deep-listening and soundscape reading: streaming/grouping underlies why a listener can pick one instrument out of an ensemble.
• SEED: An essay angle: how Gestalt principles — borrowed from visual perception — structure what we hear, and what that implies for deliberate listening practice.

Related

• Gestalt grouping principles apply to hearing as well as vision (similarity 0.87)
• Individual notes are assigned to exactly one auditory stream, altering perceived rhythm. (similarity 0.84)
• Auditory grouping by pitch proximity can override melodic continuation perception (similarity 0.82)
• The ear groups alternating notes into separate streams based on timbre differences. (similarity 0.81)
• Within-stream pattern comparisons are easier than between-stream comparisons in auditory streaming (similarity 0.79)
• Gestalt grouping principles predict relative pitch perception performance (similarity 0.79)
• Spatial separation can split identical sound sequences into percepts of distinct sources (similarity 0.78)
• Attentive focus on a particular timbre changes which auditory stream the ear follows. (similarity 0.78)