Auditory color constancy

Abstract

It is both true and efficient that sensorineural systems respond to change and little else. Perceptual systems do not record absolute level be it loudness, pitch, brightness, or color. This fact has been demonstrated in every sensory domain. For example, the visual system is remarkable at maintaining color constancy over widely varying illumination such as sunlight and varieties of artificial light (incandescent, fluorescent, etc.) for which spectra reflected from objects differ dramatically. Results will be reported for a series of experiments demonstrating how auditory systems similarly compensate for reliable characteristics of spectral shape in acoustic signals. Specifically, listeners’ perception of vowel sounds, characterized by both local (e.g., formants) and broad (e.g., tilt) spectral composition, changes radically depending upon reliable spectral composition of precursor signals. These experiments have been conducted using a variety of precursor signals consisting of meaningful and time-reversed vocoded sentences, as well as novel nonspeech precursors consisting of multiple filter poles modulating sinusoidally across a source spectrum with specific local and broad spectral characteristics. Constancy across widely varying spectral compositions shares much in common with visual color constancy. However, auditory spectral constancy appears to be more effective than visual constancy in compensating for local spectral fluctuations. [Work supported by NIDCD DC-04072.]