Thinking in Sound

The ability to make sense of the sounds in our environment is generally taken for granted. With some experience, people can distinguish different musical instruments in an orchestra, diagnose a mechanical problem in a car by listening to its engine, and recognize the footsteps of someone familiar. However, it would require a computer with enormous processing capacity to carry out even one of these apparently simple operations. Auditory cognition, the mechanisms by which the brain achieves these feats, is an important and expanding research area in experimental psychology. It has major potential applications in other areas of research, yet until now there has existed no text accessible to non-specialists. This book fulfils this need. It presents the realms of perceptual organization, memory, attention, music psychology, neuropsychology and developmental psychology as they relate to listening. The result is a summary of what is known about the cognitive aspects of human audition, including a glossary of terms.