Abstract
Auditory scene analysis (ASA) is a capacity of auditory perception that results in the hearing out or segregating of sound sources as individual objects or events when heard in the presence of other, simultaneous sources. Fish, humans, starlings, and nonhuman primates have been shown to have this capacity. I argue that any animal that hears probably has this capacity, and that it is not restricted to large-brained animals, nor to the perception of species-specific communication sounds. The demonstrations of ASA in goldfish include the capacity to hear out the frequency of pure tones when heard as a mixture of tones, and the hearing out of two, simultaneous pulse trains based on temporal and spectral differences, analagous to hearing out different musical instruments playing the same note. So far, harmonicity has been ruled out as a factor in ASA in goldfish, and spectral resolution has been shown to be necessary. ASA is a powerful phenomenon of human and animal hearing, and probably determines what we mean by “hearing.” ASA probably evolved very early as a fundamental feature of the sense of hearing.
Published Version
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