An audible activity from Scientific American Show Key concepts Introduction Background Sound travels through the air in waves. Your ears are specially equipped to receive and understand these waves. Each ear collects and channels sound waves, transforming them into vibrations. Within your inner ear tiny hair cells respond to these vibrations and send signals that your brain can decode and interpret as a variety of sounds. But why exactly do we have two ears instead of just one? Try this activity and find out. Materials Procedure Observations and results Each ear receives information that is sent to your brain. Because your ears are not side by side, they receive different information. If someone standing to your left claps his hands, your left ear will receive this sound wave more quickly than your right one. In addition, the clap will sound louder in your left ear than in your right . Your brain uses these differences to better understand where a sound is coming from. This can also explain why—as you may have noticed—it's hard to tell the difference between a sound directly in front of or behind you, even if you are using both ears. When the sound source is exactly equidistant to both ears, they receive very similar information and your brain has fewer clues as to where the source may be. Cleanup More to explore ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)Daisy Yuhas edits the Scientific American column "Mind Matters." She is a freelance science journalist and editor based in Austin, Tex. Follow Daisy Yuhas on Twitter Credit: Nick Higgins What is the name for the ability to detect sound and pinpoint the direction of the sound source?Sound localization is a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance.
What do you call the process by which we identify the direction from which a sound is coming?Sound localization refers to our ability to identify the direction of a sound source. There are two different aspects to sound localization. The first is known as absolute localization, or localization acuity, and refers to our ability to judge the absolute position of a sound source in three-dimensional space.
What is sound localization in psychology?the ability to identify the position and changes in position of sound sources based on acoustic information. When sounds are presented through headphones, the acoustic image usually appears to originate within the head and lacks the three-dimensional quality of real sound sources.
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