Page 218 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

The Auditory Scene 223

but it holds true often enough that it is worth pointing it out as a separate
principle. It is not identical to the principle of belongingness. The latter merely
states that the line has to be seen as a property of a figure, but does not prevent
it from being allocated to more than one at a time.
There is a certain ecological validity of the principle of exclusive allocation
in vision. The term ‘‘ecological validity’’ means that it tends to give the right
answers about how the visual image has probably originated in the external
world. In the case of edges separating objects, there is a very low likelihood
(except in jigsaw puzzles) that the touching edges of two objects will have the
same shape exactly. Therefore the shape of the contour that separates our view
of two objects probably tells us about the shape of only one of them—the
nearer one. The decision as to which object the contour belongs to is deter-
mined by a number of cues that help the viewer to judge which object is closer.
Dividing evidence between distinct perceptual entities (visual objects or au-
ditory streams) is useful because there really are distinct physical objects and
events in the world that we humans inhabit. Therefore the evidence that is
obtained by our senses really ought to be untangled and assigned to one or
another of them.
Our initial example came from vision, but the arguments in audition are
similar. For example, it is very unlikely that a sound will terminate at exactly
the moment that another begins. Therefore when the spectral composition of
the incoming sensory data changes suddenly, the auditory system can conclude
that only one sound in a mixture has gone on or off. This conclusion can give
rise to a search in the second sound for a continuation of the first one.
The strategy completes itself in the following way. Let us give the name A to
the segment of sound that occurs prior to the change, and call the second part
B. If spectral components are found in B that match the spectrum of A, they are
considered to be the continuing parts of A. Accordingly, they can be subtracted
out of B. This allows us a picture of the second sound free from the influence of
the first. This is called the ‘‘old-plus-new heuristic,’’ and it is shown to be one of
our most powerful tools in solving the scene analysis problem in audition. Here
I want to point out that it is an example of the principle of exclusive allocation
in which the allocation of the continuing spectral components to the first sound
interferes with their being allocated to the second.
Another case of exclusive allocation is shown in an experiment by Bregman
3
and Rudnicky, using the pattern of pure tones shown in figure 9.7. In this fig-
ure the horizontal dimension represents time and the vertical one shows the
frequency of the tones. The listener’s task was to decide on the order of two
target tones, A and B, embedded in the sequence. Were they in the order high-
low or low-high? When A and B were presented alone, as an isolated pair of
tones, this decision was very easy. However, when the two tones labeled F (for
‘‘flankers’’) were added to the pattern, the order of A and B became very hard
to hear. Apparently when they were absorbed as the middle elements of a larger
pattern, FABF, the orders AB and BA lost their uniqueness.
This experiment was about the perceptual allocation of the F tones. As long
as they were allocated to the same auditory stream as A and B, the order of A
and B was hard to hear. However, Bregman and Rudnicky reasoned that if