A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny'

Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by smallnamespace on Thursday May 17, 2018 @12:44AM (#17088786)

I had an odd experience where I would get hysteresis that depended on how fast I adjust the slider. Did anyone else get this?

E.g. if I start on the 'yanny' side and very slowly move it down, I hear 'yanny' all the way down to the 'laurel' side.

If I pause for a few seconds, I finally start hearing 'laurel', and can hear all the way to the other end too. However, moving the slider a bit more breaks the illusion.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by xenomachina on Thursday May 17, 2018 @02:22AM (#17089202)

I had a similar experience, and for a few minutes I thought the demo was buggy. The original sound sounds like "yanni" to me, but if I moved it to "laurel" and back to the middle, the middle sound would sound like "laurel" as well. At first, the only way I could get it to stop astounding like "laurel" was to pause it for a few seconds. After this happened a few times I realized it wasn't a bug, but that I was somehow subconsciously adjusting which party of the sound I was paying attending to, and then I was able to shift my attention to whichever I wanted.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by PuffinBlue on Thursday May 17, 2018 @04:35AM (#17089741)

Exactly!

And even weirder I can now choose which to hear! I went back to the original recording off twitter or wherever and I can now force myself to hear either at that pitch.

Before I couldn't hear Yanny at ALL.

Very very cool.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by teekert on Thursday May 17, 2018 @02:28AM (#17089243)

Same here! For the first time after 24 hrs I hear Yanny, I slide all the way back past 50% and it stays Yanny until much lower. Crazy stuff.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by pjrule on Thursday May 17, 2018 @12:59AM (#17088847)

Indeed, I had a similar experience. Perception is strange.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by schoen on Thursday May 17, 2018 @01:08AM (#17088879)

I had a similar experience too, but I'm not positive whether it's based entirely on perception (which is certainly possible) or some kind of bug in the demo. It would be nice to save individual Ogg files at particular points on the continuum and try more of a blind test to see how much influence there is from what we've just heard before. (I guess I could generate those myself easily enough with sox or something...)

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by Mysterix on Thursday May 17, 2018 @06:50AM (#17090222)

While I was using the slider on my computer, I kept a laurel/yanny video playing on my phone

=> I think I can confirm there is no bug in the demo.

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Re:A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny' by schoen on Thursday May 17, 2018 @09:52PM (#17098031)

Wow, I experimented with it more and it's a matter of context, just as you and other people in this thread have described. That's really striking. Thanks for confirming that it's not a bug.

This is maybe an even more extreme phenomenon (from the same subreddit that was apparently involved in making the Laurel/Yanny thing go viral this past week):

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y...

With this video, I find that I consistently hear whichever phrase I'm thinking of at the moment! (In this case either "brainstorm" or "green needle".)

Edit: Also, if anyone in this thread likes this stuff then you might really enjoy

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91513-behaves-so-strangely

if you've never heard it before (or even if you have).

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