Natural sound identity is defined by its statistical probabilities, not exact patterning

Evidence

For many natural sounds, such as wind, fire, rain, water or bubbling, integration of statistical information under continuous conditions is critical to assess the predictability of changes. While their spectrogram is dominated by small, recognizable elements (e.g. gust, crackles, drops), their occurrence is not predictable exactly , but they occur randomly in time and frequency, yet constrained by certain probabilities. As shown previously, these probabilities/statistics define the identity of such sounds, so called auditory textures (McDermott et al. 2013 ). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3285

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘auditory textures’ as sounds whose identity comes from statistics rather than exact spectrotemporal patterning.
• CANDY: A nice elevator fact: wind, fire, and rain are recognizable purely from their statistical structure, not any fixed pattern.