Hearing Segregation

Readily studied and often debated, found segregation and hierarchy processing have become hot topics of research and study among many psychologists. Recently, a group of researchers examined the organizational processes in the perception of rapid sequences of sound. The answer to this question could help in uncovering some of the mysteries as how humans perceive sound. Through two experimentations and calculations, the psychologists were able to form a hypothesis, concluding that humans find difficulty in distinguishing two simultaneous streams of sound, while played into one ear.

The research experiments were fairly simple and strait forward. The group would perform two individual experiments; with the second's purpose mainly to enhance and eliminate any doubt the first's results were somehow inaccurate. In the first experiment, 16 set of tapes which included varying arrangements of high and low sounds in random order was produced. The subjects were asked to answer witch tone they heard by marking a letter corresponding to its pitch. In the second, a set of standard tapes was produced, containing three tones and three silent gaps; as well as a comparison group with the silent gaps filled. The subjects were asked to answer whether or not the comparison tapes contained the same tones as the standard.

As the researcher's hypothesized, subjects were no much better than guessing statistically. Within the stream, subjects are very accurate, organizing the high and low streams quite efficiently. However, when combined, the subjects were no better randomly selecting the order. They concluded that unlike speech which has many differences and can be distinguished simultaneously, sound was much more difficult to distinguish.

I believe this to be partially true, as speech can vary in many ways, from person to person. However, the short term memory can only process and store so much information. Since sound is a very low process, and humans do not regularly process mere ambiguous sounds, this experiment becomes rather difficult to most. I would like to see research of musicians whom for their entire life have been distinguishing sounds, just as most humans do with speech, and see the results from the same experiment.