Causal Uncertainty and Contextual Cues in the Recognition of Environmental Sounds

Abstract

Previous research has supported the hypothesis that the recognition of environmental sounds is complicated by uncertainty caused by the number of potential causes of that sound. In natural settings, contextual cues often help to specify the source of ambiguous sounds. This proposes the question of whether contextual cues can overpower auditory information to establish causal certainty of otherwise ambiguous environmental sounds. A study was conducted to examine this possibility. The results showed that contextual cues could have powerful effects on the judgement of the causal event of auditory stimuli. This result could have implications for tasks which are dependent on discrimination of auditory events. In particular, if a discrimination between two auditory events is critical, the effects of auditory context suggest that two or more possible alternatives might be indistinguishable in context and should be isolated for purposes of contrast.