When I taught Perception to undergraduate and graduate students it was often like pulling teeth.  Most had signed up for psychology assuming it would be soft on the science end and long on the “let me understand what makes me and others tick” dimension. Not many were interested in learning the admittedly hard details of how our visual and auditory systems function, and the minute they realized that physics, chemistry and biology were involved, as well as some aspects of neuroscience, panic set in.

I am exaggerating, but only a little. To keep them going I often had to add something that augmented the physiological details by some human interest story or some such. We watched a lot of movies …. we looked at a lot of fun illusions; we discussed the implications for hearing families with deaf children to learn ALS or providing cochlear implants. We talked about the psychological consequences for blind people of regaining vision (you’d be surprised, it does not make them happy.)

The links I am attaching today are just such material – one is simply a demonstration from one of those Dance TV shows that people who are deaf can dance as IF they hear the music.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVv6VgBF5Hc

The others are more scientific: one describes a suit that allows deaf people to experience music. The other explores how augmentation with soundscapes allows blind people to recognize familiar objects. “The augmented reality system allowed blind people to accurately classify 78 percent of objects they were presented in one of three groups: people, everyday objects, or textured patterns. Moreover, the soundscapes emitted by the system also portrayed information about a person’s position, for example, among other details.”

All are interesting and would have been fair game in class – whatever it takes to stimulate interest and helps to overcome fear of science.

A Wireless Vibration Suit Helps the Deaf “Feel” Music

http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/new-insight-into-how-blind-people-see-with-sound/article/376479

And so we close this week on sound – you heard all about it…..