However with the invention of the vacuum tube and then modern computers, many researchers eagerly traded natural sounds for precisely controlled tones 10. Early experiments employed natural sounds such as balls dropping on hard surfaces and hammers striking plates 9. The ecological relevance of auditory stimuli outside of speech has ironically grown more problematic as the field evolves. Therefore the simplistic structures of tone beeps, buzzes, and clicks do not necessarily trigger the same perceptual processes as natural sounds-potentially complicating attempts to generalize from experimental outcomes to our processing of sounds outside the laboratory. However, this cue is largely absent in synthesized tones with abrupt offsets, as their short decays provide no information about sound-producing events and materials. For example, a sound’s amplitude envelope is rich in information, allowing listeners to discern the materials involved in an event 6, 7, or even an event’s outcome-such as whether a dropped bottle bounced or broke 8. However as William Gaver argued in a different context, fixating on simplistic sounds can lead researchers astray when attempting to explore the processes used in everyday listening 4, 5. Sounds synthesized with temporal shapes (“amplitude envelopes”) consisting of rapid onsets followed by sustain periods and rapid offsets afford precise quantification and description-qualities of obvious methodological value. Here we examine this issue of broad importance through an in-depth study of the stimuli used to assess non-speech auditory perception, an exploration holding important implications for interpreting a wide body of perceptual research. Although this approach has undoubtedly contributed to psychology’s success in explaining many complex phenomena, overuse of simplified tones in experiments can lead to inaccurate perspectives on perceptual processing. Today, researchers take great pains to avoid confounding factors through carefully designed paradigms employing tightly controlled stimuli. Although disappointing for his fans, it provided such an invaluable lesson in experimental control that it is still routinely discussed in introductory psychology textbooks 2, 3-a century after Hans’s debut. Subsequent investigation revealed the true source of his seemingly remarkable talent-rather than calculating, ‘Clever Hans’ merely recognized the reactions of humans who moved with excitement after seeing the correct number of taps 1. The most famous cautionary tale of failing to control for extraneous variables can be found in Hans the counting horse, who delighted early 20 th century audiences by appearing to answer basic arithmetic questions through sequential taps of his hoof. When designing research studies, scientists strive to minimize confounds potentially confusing experimental outcomes. This lack of exploration of a property increasingly recognized as playing a crucial role in perception suggests future research using stimuli with time-varying amplitude envelopes holds significant potential for furthering our understanding of the auditory system’s basic processing capabilities. invariant amplitude envelopes, this raises important questions of broad relevance to psychologists and neuroscientists alike. Given differences in task outcomes and even the underlying perceptual strategies evoked by dynamic vs. A detailed analysis of 1017 experiments from 443 articles reveals that 89% of stimuli employ amplitude envelopes lacking the dynamic variations characteristic of non-speech sounds heard outside the laboratory. To explore the issue empirically, we conducted a novel, large-scale survey of non-speech auditory perception research from four prominent journals. A growing body of work now demonstrates that some conclusions and models derived from experiments using simplistic tones fail to generalize, raising important questions about the types of stimuli used to assess the auditory system. However, prominent researchers have previously expressed concern that non-speech auditory perception research disproportionately uses simplistic stimuli lacking the temporal variation found in natural sounds. The dynamic changes in natural sounds’ temporal structures convey important event-relevant information.
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