Page 232 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

The Auditory Scene 237

those spectral components that have been allocated to that source. This hap-
pens, for example, when we hear two singers, one singing ‘‘ee’’ and the other
‘‘ah,’’ on different pitches. Despite the fact that all we have is a single spectrum,
with the harmonics from the two voices intermixed, we can clearly hear the two
vowels. Since a vowel sound is a sort of timbre, this example shows that we can
extract two timbres at the same time from a single signal.
If we turn back to the mixed spectrogram shown in figure 9.4, we see that in
order to put together the streaks of darkness belonging to the same acoustic
source, the same two kinds of grouping are necessary: (1) putting together
events that follow one another in time (sequential grouping) and (2) integrating
components that occur at the same time in different parts of the spectrum (si-
multaneous grouping). Musicians speak of a horizontal and a vertical dimen-
sion in written music. By horizontal, they refer to the groupings across the page
that are seen as melody. By vertical, they refer to the simultaneous events that
form chords and harmony. These are the same two dimensions as the ones
called sequential and simultaneous.
It is useful to distinguish these two aspects of organization because they are
controlled by different acoustic factors. Of course they interact, too.

Types of Explanation of These Phenomena
It is interestingtotakeamoment to seehow thesephenomena arerelated to
various theoretical positions. I will consider their relation to concepts drawn
from computer modeling, syntactic theory, Gestalt psychology, and physiolog-
ical explanation.
The computer modeling approach has contributed an important idea: the
notion of a heuristic. The idea was evolved in the process of designing com-
puter programs to solve difficult problems for which no mathematical solution
was known. The approach taken by the designers was to employ heuristics,
which are defined as procedures that are not guaranteed to solve the problem,
but are likely to lead to a good solution. An example would be the use of heu-
ristic tests by computer chess programs to determine whether a proposed move
would lead to a good position (e.g., to test whether the move would result in
the computer controlling the center of the board or whether the move would
lead to an exchange of pieces that favored the computer). Each move is eval-
uated by a number of such heuristics. No one of them can guarantee success,
but if there are a large number, each with some basis in the structure of the
game of chess, a move that satisfies most of them will probably be a good one.
Furthermore, if each of the heuristic evaluation processes has a chance to vote
for or against the move, the program will be less likely to be tricked than it
would be if it based its move on only one or two criteria, no matter how good
they were.
I believe that the perceptual systems work in similar ways. Having evolved
in a world of mixtures, humans have developed heuristic mechanisms capable
of decomposing them. Because the conditions under which decomposition
must be done are extremely variable, no single method is guaranteed to suc-
ceed. Therefore a number of heuristic criteria must be used to decide how to
group the acoustic evidence. These criteria are allowed to combine their effects
in a process very much like voting. No one factor will necessarily vote correctly,