Auditory science or hearing science is a field of research and education concerning the
perception of sounds by humans, animals, or machines. It is a heavily interdisciplinary field at the crossroad between
acoustics,
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...
, and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
. It is often related to one or many of these other fields:
psychophysics,
psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated wi ...
,
audiology
Audiology (from Latin , "to hear"; and from Greek , ''-logia'') is a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders. Audiologists treat those with hearing loss and proactively prevent related damage. By employing vario ...
,
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
,
otorhinolaryngology,
speech science
Speech science refers to the study of production, transmission and perception of speech. Speech science involves anatomy, in particular the anatomy of the oro-facial region and neuroanatomy, physiology, and acoustics.
Speech production
The pro ...
,
automatic speech recognition
Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...
,
music psychology
Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
, and
psycholinguistics.
History
Early auditory research included the early 19th century work of
Georg Ohm
Georg Simon Ohm (, ; 16 March 1789 – 6 July 1854) was a German physicist and mathematician. As a school teacher, Ohm began his research with the new electrochemical cell, invented by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta. Using equipment of his o ...
and
August Seebeck and their experiments and arguments about
Fourier analysis of sounds. Later in the 19th century, German physicist
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associatio ...
wrote ''
Sensations of Tone
''On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music'' (German ), commonly referred to as ''Sensations of Tone'', is a foundational work on music acoustics and the perception of sound by Hermann von Helmholtz.
The first ...
'' describing the founding concepts of psychoacoustics, i.e. the relationship between the physical parameters of a
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' b ...
and the percept that it induces.
Psychoacoutics is primarily interested in the basic workings of the ear and is, therefore, mostly studied using simple sounds like
pure tones. In the 1950s, psychologists
George A. Miller and
J. C. R. Licklider furthered our knowledge in psychoacoustics and speech perception.
Main scientific journals
Acoustical Science and TechnologyActa Acustica united with AcusticaAudiology & NeurotologyCochlear Implants InternationalEar and HearingFrontiers in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience*
Hearing Research
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing*
International Journal of Audiology (IJA)
Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing ResearchJournal of the American Academy of Audiology(JAAA)
Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology(JARO)
Journal of the Audio Engineering Society*
Music Perception
Otology & NeurotologySpeech Communication*
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
The ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of acoustics. It is published by the Acoustical Society of America and the editor-in-chief is James F. Lynch (Woods Hole Oceanog ...
(JASA)
Trends in Hearing
Scientific associations and societies
International
*
Acoustical Society of America
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society founded in 1929 dedicated to generating, disseminating and promoting the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The Society is primarily a voluntary org ...
*
Association for Research in Otolaryngology
The Association for Research in Otolaryngology is a professional association of researchers, including practitioners, teachers, and students, in the fields of otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat), and especially including hearing.
Journal
JARO ...
*
European Acoustics Association
National
* Société Française d'Acoustique (French Acoustical Society)
* Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik (German Acoustical Society)
* British Society of Audiology
* Nederlandse Vereniging voor Audiologie (Dutch Association for Audiology)
* Acoustical Society of Japan
Online resources
Many members of the auditory science community follow th
auditory.orgmailing list, known as "the Auditory List".
References
Hearing
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