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Which Word Do You Hear?

Krunok

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For me, on my laptop speakers, it works "as designed". If I try to think on both terms or something else other than those 2 things I hear "brain needle". :D
 

Phronesis

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Hi, this is my first post on ASR.

I find the Yanny/Laurel thing to be shocking and fascinating. I always clearly hear it as Laurel on various audio systems, whereas my wife always clearly hears it as Yanny on the same audio systems. I understand that the split is roughly half and half in the general population, with some people being on the borderline of hearing it as Yanny or Laurel, often influenced by the audio system. Since no one seems to mix these words up in normal live speech, the split in how people hear it from an audio clip seems to support the idea that perceptions of music, and the effects on perception of objective differences in audio systems, could vary considerably across individuals.
 

Cosmik

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Hi, this is my first post on ASR.

I find the Yanny/Laurel thing to be shocking and fascinating. I always clearly hear it as Laurel on various audio systems, whereas my wife always clearly hears it as Yanny on the same audio systems. I understand that the split is roughly half and half in the general population, with some people being on the borderline of hearing it as Yanny or Laurel, often influenced by the audio system. Since no one seems to mix these words up in normal live speech, the split in how people hear it from an audio clip seems to support the idea that perceptions of music, and the effects on perception of objective differences in audio systems, could vary considerably across individuals.
I think there is another element: the power of suggestion. The green needle/brainstorm thing shows how we can flip between the two states, and I think as I said earlier, I experienced a temporary flip from Yanny to Laurel that lasted a few seconds. I suspect that some people are more stubborn than me, and stick to whatever they first heard the word as - in spite of attempts to persuade them otherwise!
 

Phronesis

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I think there is another element: the power of suggestion. The green needle/brainstorm thing shows how we can flip between the two states, and I think as I said earlier, I experienced a temporary flip from Yanny to Laurel that lasted a few seconds. I suspect that some people are more stubborn than me, and stick to whatever they first heard the word as - in spite of attempts to persuade them otherwise!

For me, with the sound clip in unaltered form, I always hear it as Laurel and am unable to hear it as Yanny, no matter how hard I try. But if I use the NY Times slider to modify the clip and move about one click to the right, there's a zone in which I can hear it as either word, or both at the same time, depending on what word I'm expecting or trying to hear.

So I do think this provides evidence that suggestibility and bias can influence our perceptions of sound, but maybe we need to be in zones where the objective sound has certain patterns of characteristics and/or the differences in objective sounds we're comparing need to be relatively small, and all of this would involve some heterogeneity across listeners.

I really hope some qualified researchers will do a proper study of this Yanny/Laurel example and publish the results. I think it would have a lot of relevance for people interested in audio, since speech and music perception appear to have some shared brain centers and pathways.
 

Frank Dernie

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I first heard it as Laurel but later as Yanny.
The New York Times article is interesting because it gives the opportunity to filter frequencies to change from one to the other, which works for me, I was surprised by the "hysteresis" in the change over mentioned by others too
On my Apple laptop it is clearly Laurel and the slider needs to be between 3 and 4 before it becomes yanny, then I need to be back almost to the middle before I hear Laurel again.
On my hifi it is almost always Laurel - Yanny just about appears with the slider almost all the way.
 

Phronesis

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Though we know that the intent of the speaker in the audio clip was to say Laurel, if we set that intent aside and just start with the audio clip, I can't really say that listeners who hear it as one word or another (or both) are 'correct' or 'better', it seems that they just hear it differently. If there's a parallel with audio systems and music, maybe we need to be thinking about differences in how we perceive (which may be as much qualitative as quantitative), not just having more or less perceptual acuity in terms of thresholds, etc. It seems like these are two different dimensions of perception, but we don't usually make that distinction.
 

Krunok

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Ok, as most of you managed to get with the previous samples it is time for a final question: is it "I'm a paper chaser" or "I'm a big fuckin slut"? :D :D

 

Phronesis

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Ok, as most of you managed to get with the previous samples it is time for a final question: is it "I'm a paper chaser" or "I'm a big fuckin slut"? :D:D


Clearly sounds like "I'm a big bug-kisser" to me.
 

Brad

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The brain also processes music very differently to speech. The are several brain disorders/injuries which has affected speech ability and recognition but not music/singing. The researchers are yet to get a full understanding yet
 

Phronesis

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The brain also processes music very differently to speech. The are several brain disorders/injuries which has affected speech ability and recognition but not music/singing. The researchers are yet to get a full understanding yet

My understanding (not an expert) is that there's substantial overlap in brain processing of speech and music, but also significant differences.

I went back to the NY Times slider version last night, and found that I had to go farther right than before to hear Yanny on the same iphone, so that's an example of how it can change for the same person. My wife continues to hear Yanny even when the slider is all way to the left (Laurel) side.

My hypothesis is that the sound signal contains the information content needed to interpret it as both Laurel and Yanny, but one of the two will dominate and mask the other for each listener, unless the information content is near a tipping point for a given listener, in which case the listener can toggle back and forth between the two interpretations.
 

Krunok

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My understanding (not an expert) is that there's substantial overlap in brain processing of speech and music, but also significant differences.

I went back to the NY Times slider version last night, and found that I had to go farther right than before to hear Yanny on the same iphone, so that's an example of how it can change for the same person. My wife continues to hear Yanny even when the slider is all way to the left (Laurel) side.

My hypothesis is that the sound signal contains the information content needed to interpret it as both Laurel and Yanny, but one of the two will dominate and mask the other for each listener, unless the information content is near a tipping point for a given listener, in which case the listener can toggle back and forth between the two interpretations.

I'm married for more than 20 years, so I know perfectly well you can't simply tell your wife she doesn't hear well. In that context the explanation you just provided, while may not be accurate at all from neuroscience point of view, is nevertheless a very wise move! :D
 

Phronesis

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I'm married for more than 20 years, so I know perfectly well you can't simply tell your wife she doesn't hear well. In that context the explanation you just provided, while may not be accurate at all from neuroscience point of view, is nevertheless a very wise move! :D

We've also been married more than 20 years. Though we usually insist the other has it wrong, rather than agreeing that there are two valid interpretations, we somehow remain happily married! :confused:
 

Krunok

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We've also been married more than 20 years. Though we usually insist the other has it wrong, rather than agreeing that there are two valid interpretations, we somehow remain happily married! :confused:

I was just kidding. :D
 

Phronesis

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A few years ago there was a similar test that got quite some attention in audio forums: overtone or fundamental hearing.
https://www.musicandbrain.de/kurztest.html
This test (unfortunately only in German, the promised English translation doesn't seem to exist) takes about 1 min.
In my family (wife, 2 kids) there is a 100% correlation between yanny/overtone and laurel/fundamental hearing.
If you have 1 min. to spend, please do the fundamental/overtone test and report back if it correlates with yanny/laurel.
My teenage kids can easily hear up to 18 kHz (I can't), and both hear Laurel, so I don't think upper freq. limit of the ear is an issue (as has been suggested by some news articles).
 

Soniclife

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A few years ago there was a similar test that got quite some attention in audio forums: overtone or fundamental hearing.
https://www.musicandbrain.de/kurztest.html
This test (unfortunately only in German, the promised English translation doesn't seem to exist) takes about 1 min.
Can you explain how to take the test, even with google translate I was lost as to what i was meant to be doing.
 

Brad

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I’m pretty sure the idea is to click play sample, then for each sample click the button for rising or falling pitch (like music notation)
 
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