Strawberries, dresses, balls of the same color and uncolored photographs are just a few of the visual illusions that have taken the web by storm. But not all illusions are visual—some play tricks on our other senses. This time, we won’t fool our eyes, but our ears. One such auditory illusion is the “tritone paradox”, a series of sounds that everyone seems to hear differently. Would you like to try it?
It is said that the weakest form of evidence is visual, and considering how easy it is to fool our brain through our eyes, the phrase holds some weight. But sight isn’t the only sense that can betray us. Some smells are easily confused, and we can’t forget our ears. How many times have we mistaken one sound for another or believed it came from a different direction? We encounter such examples in everyday life, but others are deliberately designed, like the “tritone paradox”, verified by researcher Diana Deutsch in 1986.
The Tritone Paradox
Well, you just heard four groups of two tones. The question is: do they ascend or descend? Now have someone else listen and answer that same question. There’s the paradox. Most likely, nobody will agree The technical explanation is that the paradox was designed so that the second note (separated by half an octave from the first) contains both a higher and lower frequency simultaneously, leaving no wrong answer. What happens is that our brain shows a certain “preference” for a frequency, and that’s what we end up hearing.
According to Dr. Deutsch, the results of the paradox can vary based on factors such as our primary language and geographic location. Through her study, she discovered that many people in California disagreed with the pattern she heard, while European colleagues agreed with her. Another detail to consider is the mother-child relationship, as in most cases they tend to share the same pattern. What do you hear? The comments are open.
https://old.neoteo.com/to-bit-or-not-to-bit-ilusiones-auditivas-no-creas/
