“Listening”: Auditory perception for college freshmen

Abstract

In Freshman Seminars at Cornell, instruction in writing (“composition”) is combined with content of courses ranging from Art History to Psychology. Last semester a new course in this program, called “Listening,” taught freshmen about the psychology of hearing, using weekly topic units based on readings, lecture/demonstration/discussion periods, and weekly writing assignments. The course was an experimental attempt to reach a broader audience than auditory perception typically receives. Topics such as selective listening, echolocation, deafness, speech perception, and DAF were presented via selected readings, class discussion and lectures, and demonstration experiments in which students participated. Students evaluated some readings as still too technical for an introductory course; on the other hand, most of the demonstration experiments were judged informative and helpful. Of special interest: the units on deafness, noise, environmental sounds, and echolocation were well-received, but the two-week psychophysics unit on pitch, loudness, localization, and theories of hearing (traditional subject matter for an auditory perception course) impressed the students as difficult to understand and lacking in interest and relevance. Some implications for teaching auditory perception will be considered.