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Perception of Sound Waves

Perception of Sound Waves

The human ear is not equally sensitive to all frequencies in the audible range. It may perceive sound waves with the same pressure but different frequencies as having different loudness. Moreover, the perception of sound waves depends on the health of an individual's ears, which decays with age. The health of one's ears may also be affected by regular exposure to loud noises.
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Auditory Perception

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 16, 2025

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Expectations about dynamic visual objects facilitates early sensory processing of congruent sounds.

Andrew Marin¹, Viola S Störmer², Leslie J Carver¹

¹University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Psychology Department, La Jolla, CA, USA.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior

|October 21, 2021

Summary

Visual motion creates sound expectations, influencing early auditory processing. Synchronous audio-visual events show faster, weaker auditory responses, demonstrating how vision primes hearing.

Keywords:

Audio-visual ERP Expectation Temporal synchrony

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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Oct 16, 2025

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Published on: May 23, 2019

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Auditory Perception
Multisensory Integration

Background:

Visual perception of motion can predict upcoming sounds.
The influence of visual expectations on early auditory processing is not well understood.
Investigating how dynamic visual stimuli shape auditory event-related potentials.

Purpose of the Study:

To examine how visual motion influences early auditory processing.
To determine if visual expectations affect auditory responses to congruent or incongruent sounds.
To explore the roles of expectancy and multisensory integration in this cross-modal influence.

Main Methods:

Electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded from adult participants.
Participants passively viewed a moving ball and heard sounds.
Conditions included audio-visual synchronous, asynchronous, occluded, and audio-only trials.

Main Results:

Audio-visual synchronous sounds elicited earlier and attenuated auditory responses compared to asynchronous or audio-only sounds.
An expected sound during visual occlusion (AV-occluded condition) produced similar auditory responses to AV-synchronous events.
Dynamic visual stimuli generate expectations about sound timing, facilitating auditory processing.

Conclusions:

Visual motion perception primes auditory processing by creating expectations.
These visual expectations modulate early auditory-evoked potentials.
Multisensory integration, driven by expectancy, plays a key role in cross-modal influences on perception.