Psychology 2115A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Spiral Ganglion, Eustachian Tube, Auditory Scene Analysis

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2115A/B
• Professor: Stephen Lupker

Document Summary

Sound is a series of changes in mechanical pressure in an elastic medium (ie. air, water). Eg. a guitar string vibrates, moving rapidly back and forth in space. This movement causes the strand of steel to collide with the air molecules around it. The molecules collide with others, causing air compression as the string moves forward, and rarefaction as it moves back. Sound waves can transmit over great distances, even though the molecules vibrate small distances, because the molecules collide and move the pressure wave through space. However, each collision loses a bit of energy, so the sound gets weaker the further away you are. Frequency ()- the number of cycles completed during one second: expressed in hertz (hz). 1 hz = 1 cycle/sec: most important factor determining the pitch we hear, pitch- refers to whether we are experiencing a high or low note/tone, normal human hearing can hear pitch of 20 to 20,000 hz.