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Module 1.6c

Module 1.6c Sensation: Hearing

LEARNING TARGETS
1.6-9 Describe the characteristics of air pressure waves that we hear as sound.
1.6-10 Explain how the ear transforms sound energy into neural messages.

1.6-11 Discuss how we detect loudness, discriminate pitch, and locate sounds.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.

ike our other senses, our hearing — audition — helps us adapt and survive. Hearing
provides information and enables relationships. Hearing humanizes: People seem
wonder: How do we do it? Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
L more thoughtful, competent, and likable when we hear, not just read, their words
(Schroeder & Epley, 2015, 2016). And hearing is pretty spectacular. It lets us communi-
cate invisibly — by shooting unseen air waves across space and receiving the same from
others. Hearing loss is the great invisible disability. To not catch someone’s name, to not
grasp what someone is asking, and to miss the hilarious joke is to be deprived of what
others know, and sometimes to feel excluded. As a person with inherited hearing loss,
I [DM] know the feeling, and can understand why adults with significant hearing loss
experience increased risk of depression and anxiety (Blazer & Tucci, 2019; Scinicariello
et al., 2019).
Most of us, however, can hear a wide range of sounds, and the ones we hear best are
those in the range of the human voice. With normal hearing, we are remarkably sensitive to
faint sounds, such as a phone ping. (If our ears were only slightly more sensitive, we would
hear a constant hiss from the movement of air molecules.) Our distant ancestors’ survival
depended on this keen hearing when hunting or being hunted.
We are also remarkably attuned to sound variations. Among thousands of possible
voices, we easily recognize an unseen friend’s voice. Moreover, hearing is fast. “It might take
you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward
it, recognize it, and respond to it,” notes auditory neuroscientist Seth Horowitz (2012). “The
same reaction to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.” A fraction of a
second after such events stimulate your ear’s receptors, millions of neurons have simulta-
neously coordinated in extracting the essential features, comparing them with past experi-
ence, and identifying the stimulus (Freeman, 1991). For hearing, as for our other senses, we

Sound Waves and the Ear

Draw a bow across a violin, and you will unleash the energy of sound waves. Each bumping
into the next, air molecules create waves of compressed and expanded air, like the ripples on audition the sense or act of
a pond circling out from a tossed stone. As we swim in our ocean of moving air molecules, hearing.
our ears detect these brief air pressure changes.

Sensation: Hearing Module 1.6c 135

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