Bruno L. Giordano, researcher from MGill University, will give a seminar on "Perception of the sound source in purely auditory and multisensory contexts" on Monday July 14th at 12:30 in room 301 of Ocata.

Abstract: Perceptual systems provide the organism with a knowledge of the objects and events that structure the available sensory information. Classical research on audition provides a partial account of the integration of sensory information in everyday perceptual judgments, leaving an empty space between the laboratory and the everyday world. The study of the perception of the sound source aims at filling such a gap. In this talk, I will outline four studies on the perception of the sound source, in purely auditory and multisensory contexts. A first study investigated the identification of the material of struck objects. Biases in identification responses were interpreted as a result of the internalization of statistical regularities in the acoustical environment. A second study assessed the estimation of the similarity of living and nonliving sound sources. Results pointed toward a symbolic listening mode for living sound events, focused on abstract information, and toward a sensory listening mode for nonliving sound events, based on acoustical information. A third study investigated non-visual identification of real walking grounds, focusing on auditory, haptic and proprioceptive information. Multisensory integration yielded different results depending on the classes of investigated materials. For solid materials (e.g., marble), discrimination abilities slightly improved in a multisensory context. For aggregate materials (e.g., gravels), multisensory discrimination was significantly impaired. A final study assessed the integration of auditory and haptic information in action-based perception of striking events. For each single participant, the modality that dominated in a multisensory context was that associated with the largest effects in a unimodal context, and not the most reliable modality which allowed the most precise control of action. However, unimodal reliability appeared to predict modality dominance at the population level.

Bruno Giordano's homepage