University of California-Riverside scientists say humans perceive more than they think they do — even reading unheard speech from the movement of dots.
Volunteers in Psychology Professor Lawrence Rosenblum’s listening lab have demonstrated they can also recognize people’s voices just from seeing their faces.
We get people ready for a test and tell them what we want them to do, and a lot of them think there’s absolutely no way they’ll be able to do that, said Rosenblum. Some are very surprised when it turns out that they can.
In another experiment, undergraduates were shown three shapes — a triangle, a disc and a square cut from sound-insulating foam board. They also saw an array of eight horn-style loudspeakers that the shapes would block and were told the speakers would make a white-noise sound. Blindfolded, they were asked to identify which shape was positioned in front of the loudspeakers.
Our results show that listeners can identify the shape of sound-occluding objects at better than chance levels, with some listeners displaying near-perfect performance, Rosenblum said.
