Auditory Perceptual Organization

Abstract

Sounds carry information about things that happen in our environment and so the sense of auditory perception is primarily concerned with interpreting the unfolding of events in time. In this article, problems of auditory perceptual organization and the resulting processing strategies adopted by the auditory system are considered. A particular focus is on the principles that guide the formation of links between sounds, and their separation from other sounds. Experimental paradigms that have been used to investigate auditory perceptual organization and the behavioral and neural correlates of perceptual organization are described. The need for operating in real-time is used to motivate a working definition of auditory perceptual objects as representations predictive of upcoming sound events, with switching between candidate representations being the basis for perceptual flexibility necessary for robust performance within a changing and cluttered natural environment.