Advancing the Science and Practice of Human Information Gathering
Video - What do you hear?
Human hearing is not a passive recording system. The meaning we assign to a sound is influenced by context, expectation, prior knowledge, attention, and the information available at the moment we hear it. This demonstration explores how an ambiguous auditory signal can support more than one interpretation—and how a suggested word or phrase may change what a listener believes the sound contains. The same perceptual processes operate not only when we listen to recordings, but also when we hear speech and other sounds during unfolding real-world events.
The demonstration illustrates an important distinction between the acoustic information that reached the listener and the meaning the listener perceived. Once an interpretation becomes established, it may influence how the sound is subsequently heard, remembered, and described. The accompanying article, “What Do You Hear? Auditory Perception, Expectation, and the Formation of Memory,” examines how these processes can contribute to different recollections among people who experienced the same event—even when they were standing only feet apart.