A Perceptual Bias for Looming Auditory Motion

An approaching sound source creates a rising intensity pattern that can specify the source's arrival time.  In this study, listeners reliably overestimated the change of rising level tones relative to equivalent falling level tones. In a natural environment this overestimation could provide a selective advantage, because rising intensity can signal source movement toward an organism.  The bias was stronger in higher intensity ranges, suggesting that rising loudness is even more critical when a source is close or loud.  The results suggest a privileged status of dynamic rising loudness for periodic tones and an asymmetry in the neural coding of dynamic intensity change. 

For more information see:

• Neuhoff, J. G. (1998). A perceptual bias for rising tones. Nature.  395 (6698), 123-124.
• Neuhoff, J. G. (2001) An adaptive bias in the perception of looming auditory motion. Ecological Psychology 13 (2) 87-110. 
• Ghazanfar, A.A., Neuhoff, J.G., Logothetis, N.K. (2002). Auditory looming perception in rhesus monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 99 (24) 15755-15757.
• Seifritz, E. Neuhoff, J.G., Bilecen, D., Scheffler, D., Mustovic, H., Schächinger,H., Elefante, R., & Di Salle, F. (2002) Neural processing of auditory 'looming' in the human brain. Current Biology, 12, 2147-2151.

• Maier, J. X., Neuhoff, J. G., Logothetis N. K., Ghazanfar, A. A. (2004). Multisensory Integration of Looming Signals by Rhesus Monkeys. Neuron, 43, 177-181.

• Bach, D.R., Schächinger, H., Neuhoff, J.G., Esposito, F. Di Salle,F., Lehmann, C., Herdener, M., Scheffler, K., Seifritz, E. (2007). Rising sound intensity as an intrinsic warning cue. Cerebral Cortex., doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm040.