Deck 11: Auditory Pattern Perception

Question 1

Which of the following statements is FALSE?

A) The more similar two auditory sounds are, the easier it is to separate the two streams of information.
B) Higher-level processes contribute to many aspects of auditory functioning.
C) We use frequency, timbre, location, and timing to segregate auditory streams.
D) Memory plays a crucial role in the processing of complex auditory stimuli.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Watson and Kidd's studies on the effects of learning and memory in auditory perception have shown that:

A) With practice, people become better at detecting subtle details of complex auditory sounds.
B) People are better at detecting differences across complex auditory sequences than across isolated tones.
C) People are better at detecting subtle details of complex auditory sounds when they are new.
D) Central processes are rarely used to detect subtle details of complex auditory sounds.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Humans can hear frequencies that range from:

A) 1000 Hz to 5000 Hz
B) 300.5 Hz to 5015 Hz
C) 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz
D) 27.5 Hz to 4186 Hz

Answer 3

C

Question 4

The fundamental frequencies on a piano range from:

A) 1000 Hz to 5000 Hz
B) 300.5 Hz to 5015 Hz
C) 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz
D) 27.5 Hz to 4186 Hz

Question 5

Two notes on a keyboard that are exactly one octave apart:

A) differ in tone chroma and tone height
B) differ in tone chroma but have the same tone height
C) differ in tone height but have the same tone chroma
D) have the same tone chroma and tone height

Question 6

If C1 is the lowest C on the piano and has a frequency of 32.7 Hz, what is the frequency of middle C (C4)?

A) 32.7
B) 65.4
C) 130.8
D) 261.6

Question 7

Western musicians and composers organize musical sounds into __________________ tone chroma.

A) 7
B) 12
C) 14
D) 15

Question 8

Which of the following pairs of notes on the piano would differ in tone chroma?

A) A4 and A5
B) C3 and C6
C) F5 and G5
D) both A and B

Question 9

People who are able to name the note of a tone presented in isolation are said to have:

A) tone deafness
B) absolute pitch perception
C) relative pitch perception
D) Broca's aphasia

Question 10

Which of the following statements about absolute pitch perception is FALSE?

A) Only humans exhibit absolute pitch perception.
B) Only 1 in 10,000 people exhibit absolute pitch perception.
C) More people exhibit relative pitch perception than absolute pitch perception.
D) Absolute pitch perception is more common among musicians than non-musicians.

Question 11

Which of the following statements about absolute pitch perception is FALSE?

A) Absolute pitch perception runs in families.
B) People with absolute pitch are particularly good at identifying the notes found in unusual keys (e.g., the key of F#)
C) Many people who speak tonal languages (e.g., Chinese) also develop absolute pitch perception.
D) Many very young infants display absolute pitch perception.

Question 12

When a piece of music has been transposed:

A) the key changes
B) the relationships between adjacent tones remains constant
C) the relationships between adjacent tones changes
D) both A and B
E) both A and C

Question 13

Tone deafness usually stems from abnormalities in the brain development in:

A) the inner ear
B) the right auditory cortex
C) the left auditory cortex
D) the cochlea

Question 14

Which of the following characteristics is NOT descriptive of people with tone deafness?

A) They have absolute pitch.
B) They do not enjoy music.
C) They have difficulty perceiving music accurately.
D) They have difficulty producing melodies accurately.

Question 15

Whether two sounds played simultaneously sound pleasant or unpleasant is largely due to:

A) whether the tones come from the same tone height →
B) whether the frequencies of the two tones form a simple ratio
C) whether the listener has absolute pitch
D) whether the sounds come from the same instrument

Question 16

Which of the following tone combinations would sound most dissonant?

A) C5 and C8
B) G3 and G4
C) 440 Hz and 880 Hz
D) 392 Hz and 415 Hz

Question 17

When a flute and a trumpet play the same note at the same loudness, we are still able to distinguish between the two sounds. This is because the two sounds differ in their:

A) frequency
B) amplitude
C) timbre
D) tempo

Question 18

More recent theories state that timbre is best explained by:

A) the number of harmonics
B) the contributing frequencies
C) the shape of the sound envelope
D) the rate at which the tone is played

Question 19

The pace of a song, measured in beats per minute is called the:

A) tempo
B) rhythm
C) timbre
D) attack

Question 20

Which of the following statements about tempo is TRUE?

A) People are good at maintaining tempos of 30 beats per minute.
B) People are good at maintaining tempos of 100 beats per minute.
C) People are good at maintaining tempos of 300 beats per minute.
D) all of the above

Question 21

Tone chroma appears to be encoded in the:

A) temporal cortex
B) frontal cortex
C) occipital cortex
D) parietal cortex

Question 22

Individuals with absolute pitch perception show activation in the frontal cortex when __________________. Individuals with relative pitch perception show activation in the frontal cortex when __________________.

A) a pair of tones is played; a pair of tones is played
B) a pair of tones is played; a single tone is played
C) a single tone is played; a pair of tones is played
D) both A and C

Question 23

Evidence from case studies (such as Ian McDonald) suggests that the right parietal cortex plays a role in:

A) reading sheet music
B) absolute pitch perception
C) relative pitch perception
D) perceiving a sound's timbre

Question 24

The Gestalt principle of the law of proximity applies to music perception in that:

A) listeners tend to group a tone with immediately preceding or following tones
B) listeners tend to group a tone with tones from similar pitch ranges
C) listeners tend to group a tone with tones of similar loudness
D) listeners tend to group a tone with tones of similar timbre

Question 25

Studies investigating the perception of figure-ground relationships in music perception indicate:

A) only one melodic line can be heard as a "figure" at any given time
B) only one melodic line can be heard as the "ground" at any given time
C) even non-musicians are able to perceive multiple "figures" at any given time
D) both A and B

Question 26

Which of the following statements about musicians and non-musicians is TRUE?

A) Non-musicians and musicians can recognize when a familiar song is misplayed.
B) Non-musicians can recognize when an unfamiliar song has a discordant note.
C) Musicians can recognize when an unfamiliar song has a discordant note.
D) both B and C
E) A, B, and C

Question 27

Which of the following statements about infants' music perception is TRUE?

A) The auditory areas of infants' brains are remarkably similar to those of adult musicians.
B) Infants are born with a preference for certain rhythms.
C) Transposing the key of a song hinders an infant's ability to recognize it.
D) Infants are sensitive to the melodic contour of a song.

Question 28

Two tones are presented simultaneously to a listener. Specifically, C4 is presented to the left ear while C5 is presented to the right ear). Then, the two tones are again presented simultaneously to the listener, but this time the tones are switched so that C5 is presented to the left ear while C4 is presented to the right ear.
i. After repeating this auditory pattern for a few trials, listeners report
hearing:

A) C4 in the left ear and then C4 in the right ear (with this pattern repeating)
B) C5 in the left ear and then C5 in the right ear (with this pattern repeating)
C) C4 in the left ear and then C5 in the right ear (with this pattern repeating)
D) C5 in the left ear and then C4 in the right ear (with this pattern repeating)

Question 29

In the octave illusion, the left ear typically hears low-frequency tones while the right ear typically hears high-frequency tones. This is because:

A) the low-frequency stimuli are only presented to the left ear and the high-frequency stimuli are only presented to the right ear
B) the high-frequency stimuli are only presented to the left ear and the low-frequency stimuli are only presented to the right ear
C) there is an asymmetry between brain hemispheres in processing frequency information
D) the low-frequency stimuli are presented louder than the high-frequency stimuli

Question 30

Work by Deutsch on the tritone paradox suggests that a person's tendency to hear the tones as going up or going down is due to:

A) the timbre of the two tones presented
B) the musical background of the listener
C) the rate at which the two tones are presented
D) the pitch range typically heard in spoken language

Question 31

Which of the following is a phoneme?

A) the sound of a piano playing middle C
B) the word "candle"
C) the "re" in "rewind"
D) the "b" sound in "ball"

Question 32

The consonant sounds /p/ and /b/ differ in their:

A) place of articulation
B) manner of articulation
C) voicing
D) prosody

Question 33

Which of the following is NOT a way in which consonants are discriminated?

A) whether they are voiced or unvoiced
B) the location of constriction in the vocal tract
C) the manner of articulation
D) the position and height of the tongue

Question 34

When producing a voiceless consonant:

A) the vocal cords do not vibrate
B) the vocal cords vibrate
C) the air is completely blocked
D) the tongue is raised high in the mouth

Question 35

Stress, rate, and intonation all contribute to the rhythm of speech. Therefore, these aspects make up the __________________ of speech.

A) voicing
B) prosody
C) phonemes
D) formants

Question 36

A __________________ is used to visually describe the acoustic signal of speech by plotting frequency as a function of time.

A) speech spectrogram
B) voice onset graph
C) formant grid
D) sound map

Question 37

In looking at the speech signal on a speech spectrogram:

A) word boundaries are easy to identify.
B) phoneme boundaries are easy to identify.
C) a given phoneme may have different pronunciations.
D) both A and B

Question 38

Coarticulation is used to describe the fact that:

A) phonemes tend to overlap with one another in the speech stream
B) a single phoneme does not have a single, constant pronunciation
C) our vocal system is capable of producing both consonants and vowels
D) consonant sounds can either be voiced or voiceless

Question 39

Misperceiving the jingle "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" as "Nobody does it like Sara Lee" is an example of:

A) coarticulation
B) a mondegreen
C) phonemic restoration
D) the McGurk effect

Question 40

The findings of Pollack and Pickett indicate that:

A) listeners rarely misperceive words presented in isolation
B) emotions affect a number of different aspects of prosody
C) speakers are quite precise in their pronunciation of words in conversation
D) context aids in the identification of spoken words

Question 41

Which of the following statements does NOT describe the assumptions made by Special Mechanism accounts of speech perception?

A) Humans are born with an innate ability to represent speech at a phonetic level.
B) Humans have a both a generalized auditory perception module and a speech module.
C) Humans have evolved in such a way that they are able to process both speech and nonspeech stimuli using the same mechanisms.
D) both A and B

Question 42

According to the motor theory of speech perception:

A) listeners use knowledge about how sounds are produced as an aid in speech perception
B) humans have a specialized phonetic module that allows them to decode speech stimuli
C) recognition of the motor commands necessary to produce a sound is conscious
D) both A and B
E) A, B, and C

Question 43

The inability to discriminate sounds within a phonemic category is called:

A) phonemic restoration
B) categorical perception
C) assimilation
D) coarticulation

Question 44

Because of categorical perception:

A) slight differences between two /b/ sounds are easily detected
B) we can discriminate between all pairs of speech sounds
C) we experience a sharp boundary between two phonemes
D) all of the above

Question 45

Which of the following provided evidence against the Special Mechanism account?

A) Nonhuman species also demonstrate categorical perception.
B) Humans exhibit categorical perception for complex nonspeech sounds.
C) People do not always integrate formants with their bases.
D) all of the above

Question 46

Which of the following is NOT characteristic of Broca's aphasia?

A) brain damage is in the left frontal lobe
B) speech comprehension is severely impaired
C) patient is aware of their language disorder
D) speech consists primarily of content words

Question 47

Mark is a stroke patient with severe deficit in language comprehension. Although the words that he uses appear somewhat random and lack meaning, the prosody and syntax of the language seem intact. A CT scan reveals that he has brain damage in the left temporal lobe. Mark most likely has:

A) Broca's aphasia
B) Wernicke's aphasia
C) tone deafness
D) absolute pitch

Question 48

The top-down process in which the listener uses context to fill in the sounds that are missing from the speech signal is called:

A) phonotactic constraints
B) categorical perception
C) phonemic restoration
D) the McGurk effect

Question 49

Warren and Warren (1970) found that when a phoneme was removed from the speech signal and replaced with a cough:

A) listeners had difficulty interpreting the sentence
B) listeners were not able to hear the cough
C) listeners knew which sound had been replaced
D) listeners reported hearing the missing phoneme

Question 50

In the McGurk effect, when the visual information is "ga" and the auditory information is "ba":

A) people perceive "da"
B) people perceive "ba"
C) people perceive "ga"
D) people perceive "wa"

Question 51

The McGurk effect is significant in that it illustrates that:

A) we use both auditory and visual information in perceiving speech sounds
B) listeners fill in missing auditory information by using context
C) speech sounds are more accurately perceived within a phrase than in isolation
D) we are better able to perceive speech when we know the topic of the speech

Question 52

The McGurk effect is diminished with:

A) spatial discrepancy between the visual and auditory information
B) temporal discrepancy between the visual and auditory information
C) degraded facial information
D) all of the above

Question 53

Boltz's work on the role of background music on the perception of films suggests that:

A) people accurately recall the background melodies played during film clips
B) background music enhances people's memory for film clips
C) appropriate background music increases people's satisfaction rating of a film clip
D) both A and B