Overview: Psychoacoustics

Abstract

Hearing is a primary means for us to acquire information about the world in which we live. When someone responds to sound, we say they hear; thus, hearing has two key components: sound and a behavioral response to sound. Psychophysics has been defined as the study of the relationship between the physical properties of sensory stimuli and the behavior this stimulation evokes. Psychoacoustics is the study of the behavioral consequences of sound stimulation, that is, hearing. Psychophysicists, in general, and psychoacousticians, in particular, have searched for functional relationships between measures of behavior and the physical properties of sensory stimulation; for psychoacousticians, this is the search for: 1$$\Omega = f(S)$$where Ω is a measure of behavior, S is a physical property of sound, and f() represents a functional relationship.