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Perception completes masked vocal phrases using semantic context to make them continuous

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tagsja-picks, category/causal-relationships
aliases@howard_acoustics_2017, loc. 1659

2 min read

Perception completes masked vocal phrases using semantic context to make them continuous

Evidence

Beatboxing in which a single vocalist produces percussive sounds as well as vocal sounds, sometimes simultaneously, resulting in a sound in which the sung and percussive parts are heard as two separate lines, when in fact they are a single line interspersed with each other. We hear them as separate lines due to auditory streaming based on grouping by similarity (see Section 5.5.3). In addition, since a beatboxer can only produce a single line, the sung words are broken up by the percussive sounds. However, the sung lines are perceived as being continuous due to the fact that being masked by the percussive sounds, the perceptual system joins them up as if they were not broken up based on semantic context in terms of completing the phrases to make them meaningful. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1659

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

  • XREF: The perceptual completion of masked sounds parallels the reader’s prior work on silence — the brain fills gaps exactly as it does in acoustic silence, connecting to the books on silence and soundscape.
  • CANDY: Beatboxing listeners hear two lines from one vocalist because the brain stream-separates and fills gaps — a fun party fact about perception.

Broader Connections

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