Understanding Sound

Abstract

Abstract Research on auditory perception often starts from an assumed theoretical framework of bottom-up acoustic signal decoding followed by pattern matching of signal information to memory. Some specific forms of auditory perception such as speech perception are often assumed to be mediated by specialized mechanisms, shaped by evolution to address the challenges of speech perception. However, neither of these broad approaches conceives of these systems as intrinsically adaptable and plastic; learning is typically considered as a separate process. This chapter addresses the question of auditory perceptual understanding and plasticity and argues that auditory perception, including speech perception, is an active cognitive process that incorporates learning. In contrast to a passive process in which patterns are mapped into memory in a direct comparative process, an active process forms hypotheses about pattern identity, and tests these hypotheses to adaptively shift attention to aspects of signal information. The process of hypothesis testing for signal understanding comes into play in cases of signal ambiguity or uncertainty, and involves auditory working memory and the control of attention. This conceptualization of adaptive processing incorporates context-sensitive change into the perceptual system. We argue that perception should be viewed not as a fixed instrument of information reception, but as a dynamic, adaptive system that is changed by the act of perception. We present evidence for these claims, outline a framework for a theory of active auditory perception, and argue further against claims of critical periods as biological determinism for perceptual plasticity given that auditory perception is auditory learning.