Yanny or Laurel

Last updated

Yanny or Laurel is an auditory illusion that became popular in May 2018, in which a short audio recording of speech can be heard as one of two words. [1] 53 percent of over 500,000 respondents to a Twitter poll reported hearing a man saying the word "Laurel", while 47 percent of people reported hearing a voice saying the name "Yanny". [2] Analysis of the sound frequencies has confirmed that both sets of sounds are present in the mixed recording, [3] but some users focus on the higher-frequency sounds in "Yanny" and cannot seem to hear the lower sounds of the word "Laurel". When the audio clip is slowed to lower frequencies, the word "Yanny" is heard by more listeners, while faster playback loudens "Laurel".[ dubious discuss ][ citation needed ]

Contents

Background

The mixed re-recording was created by students who played the sound of the word "laurel" while re-recording the playback amid background noise in the room. [4] The audio clip of the main word "laurel" originated in 2007 from a recording of opera singer Jay Aubrey Jones, [5] who spoke the word "laurel" [6] as one of 200,000 reference pronunciations produced and published by vocabulary.com in 2007. [2] [7] [6] The clip was made at Jones' home using a laptop and microphone, with acoustic foam to soundproof the recording. [8] The discovery of the ambiguity phenomenon is attributed to Katie Hetzel, a 15-year-old freshman at Flowery Branch High School in Flowery Branch, Georgia, who posted a description publicly on Instagram on May 11, 2018. [9] The illusion reached further popularity the next day when Hetzel's friend posted it on Reddit, [2] where it was picked up by YouTuber Cloe Feldman, who subsequently posted about it on her Twitter account. [7]

Pop culture

Notable individuals who responded to the auditory illusion included Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen King, and Chrissy Teigen. [10] [11] Musicians Laurel Halo and Yanni, whose names are similar to those given in the auditory illusion, also responded. [12] In a video released by the White House, various members of the Trump administration reacted to the meme, and President Donald Trump said, "I hear covfefe", as a reference to his "covfefe" tweet the previous year. [13] [14]

In The Guardian , the clip was compared to the 2015 gold/blue dress controversy. [15] Several days after the clip became popular, the team at Vocabulary.com added a separate entry for the word "Yanny", which contained an audio clip identical to "Laurel". [16] [17] Its definition is about the Internet trend. [17]

Scientific analysis

On May 16, 2018, a report in The New York Times noted a spectrogram analysis confirmed how the extra sounds for "yanny" can be graphed in the mixed re-recording. [3] [18] The sounds were also simulated by combining syllables of the same Vocabulary.com voice saying the words "Yangtze" and "uncanny" as a mash-up of sounds which gave a similar spectrogram as the extra sounds graphed in the laurel re-recording. [3]

Benjamin Munson, a professor of audiology at the University of Minnesota, suggested that "Yanny" can be heard in higher frequencies while "Laurel" can be heard in lower frequencies. [1] Older people, whose ability to hear higher frequencies is more likely to have degraded, usually hear "Laurel". Kevin Franck, the director of audiology at the Boston hospital Massachusetts Eye and Ear says that the clip exists on a "perceptual boundary" and compared it to the Necker Cube illusion. [19] David Alais from the University of Sydney's school of psychology also compared the clip to the Necker Cube or the face/vase illusion, calling it a "perceptually ambiguous stimulus". [15] Brad Story, a professor of speech, language, and audiology at the University of Arizona said that the low quality of the recording creates ambiguity. [20] Hans Rutger Bosker, psycholinguist and phonetician at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, showed that it is possible to make the same person hear the same audio clip differently by presenting it in different acoustic contexts: if one hears the ambiguous audio clip after a lead-in sentence without any high frequencies (>1000 Hz), this makes the higher frequencies in the following ambiguous audio clip stand out more, making people report "Yanny" where they previously may have heard "Laurel". [21]

Pitch-shifted versions

By pitch shifting the original audio to higher or lower frequencies, the same listener can report different interpretations. [22] The New York Times released an interactive tool on their website that changes the pitch of the recording in real-time. The interactive slider allows the recording to be played back at any pitch between 3 semitones higher (to help the listener hear "Laurel"), and 6 semitones lower (to help the listener hear "Yanny"). [3]

Similar auditory illusions

Brainstorm/Green needle

In May 2018, a similar viral story grew around a video review of a children's toy from the Ben 10 franchise, where the toy's electronic speech could be heard as either the character's name of "Brainstorm", or the phrase "green needle", depending on which phrase the listener was primed to expect. [23] [24] [25] Others have also reported hearing "green storm" or "brain needle". [26] [27]

The illusion was attributed to the poor quality of the toy's audio recording. Valerie Hazan, a professor of speech sciences at University College London, said of the video that "When faced with an acoustic signal which is somewhat ambiguous because it is low-quality or noisy, your brain attempts a 'best fit' between what is heard and the expected word." [23]

Oh, Barbie!

A scene from the 2010 animated film Toy Story 3 has also been compared to the Yanny/Laurel phenomenon: a scene where Ken exclaims "Oh, Barbie!" has been reported to be selectively mishearable as "Oh, fuck!" [28] [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High fidelity</span> High-quality reproduction of sound

High fidelity is the high-quality reproduction of sound. It is popular with audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat frequency response within the human hearing range.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shepard tone</span> Auditory illusion

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that seems to continually ascend or descend in pitch, yet which ultimately gets no higher or lower.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pitch (music)</span> Perceptual property in music ordering sounds from low to high

Pitch is a perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre.

Auditory illusions are illusions of real sound or outside stimulus. These false perceptions are the equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or sounds that should not be possible given the circumstance on how they were created.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Missing fundamental</span> Acoustic phenomenon

The pitch being perceived with the first harmonic being absent in the waveform is called the missing fundamental phenomenon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tritone paradox</span> An auditory illusion perceived by some people to be rising in pitch and by others to be falling

The tritone paradox is an auditory illusion in which a sequentially played pair of Shepard tones separated by an interval of a tritone, or half octave, is heard as ascending by some people and as descending by others. Different populations tend to favor one of a limited set of different spots around the chromatic circle as central to the set of "higher" tones. Roger Shepard in 1963 had argued that such tone pairs would be heard ambiguously as either ascending or descending. However, psychology of music researcher Diana Deutsch in 1986 discovered that when the judgments of individual listeners were considered separately, their judgments depended on the positions of the tones along the chromatic circle. For example, one listener would hear the tone pair C–F as ascending and the tone pair G–C as descending. Yet another listener would hear the tone pair C–F as descending and the tone pair G–C as ascending. Furthermore, the way these tone pairs were perceived varied depending on the listener's language or dialect.

An audio frequency or audible frequency (AF) is a periodic vibration whose frequency is audible to the average human. The SI unit of frequency is the hertz (Hz). It is the property of sound that most determines pitch.

Deutsch's scale illusion is an auditory illusion in which two series of unconnected notes appear to combine into a single recognisable melody, when played simultaneously into the left and right ears of a listener.

The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound. If a person is getting poor-quality auditory information but good-quality visual information, they may be more likely to experience the McGurk effect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic voice phenomenon</span> Paranormal terminology and recordings

Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. Parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive, who popularized the idea in the 1970s, described EVP as typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.

Sound localization is a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereophonic sound</span> Method of sound reproduction using two audio channels

Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration of two loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hearing range</span> Range of frequencies that can be heard by humans or other animals

Hearing range describes the frequency range that can be heard by humans or other animals, though it can also refer to the range of levels. The human range is commonly given as 20 to 20,000 Hz, although there is considerable variation between individuals, especially at high frequencies, and a gradual loss of sensitivity to higher frequencies with age is considered normal. Sensitivity also varies with frequency, as shown by equal-loudness contours. Routine investigation for hearing loss usually involves an audiogram which shows threshold levels relative to a normal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auditory scene analysis</span>

In perception and psychophysics, auditory scene analysis (ASA) is a proposed model for the basis of auditory perception. This is understood as the process by which the human auditory system organizes sound into perceptually meaningful elements. The term was coined by psychologist Albert Bregman. The related concept in machine perception is computational auditory scene analysis (CASA), which is closely related to source separation and blind signal separation.

In audio signal processing, auditory masking occurs when the perception of one sound is affected by the presence of another sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sound</span> Vibration that travels via pressure waves in matter

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain. Only acoustic waves that have frequencies lying between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz, the audio frequency range, elicit an auditory percept in humans. In air at atmospheric pressure, these represent sound waves with wavelengths of 17 meters (56 ft) to 1.7 centimeters (0.67 in). Sound waves above 20 kHz are known as ultrasound and are not audible to humans. Sound waves below 20 Hz are known as infrasound. Different animal species have varying hearing ranges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hearing</span> Sensory perception of sound by living organisms

Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is auditory science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audio mixing (recorded music)</span> Audio mixing to yield recorded sound

In sound recording and reproduction, audio mixing is the process of optimizing and combining multitrack recordings into a final mono, stereo or surround sound product. In the process of combining the separate tracks, their relative levels are adjusted and balanced and various processes such as equalization and compression are commonly applied to individual tracks, groups of tracks, and the overall mix. In stereo and surround sound mixing, the placement of the tracks within the stereo field are adjusted and balanced. Audio mixing techniques and approaches vary widely and have a significant influence on the final product.

Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, and music. Psychoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field including psychology, acoustics, electronic engineering, physics, biology, physiology, and computer science.

Covfefe is a word, widely presumed to be a typographical error, that Donald Trump used in a viral tweet when he was in his first term as President of the United States. It quickly became an Internet meme.

References

  1. 1 2 Kirby, Jen (May 16, 2018). "Why you hear "Laurel" or "Yanny" in that viral audio clip, explained". Vox. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Salam, Maya; Victor, Daniel (May 15, 2018). "Laurel or Yanny? What We Heard From the Experts". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Josh Katz; Jonathan Corum and Jon Huang (May 16, 2018). "We Made a Tool So You Can Hear Both Yanny and Laurel". The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2018. playing the "laurel" clip over speakers and re-recording it introduced noise and exaggerated the higher frequencies.
  4. Josh Katz; Jonathan Corum and Jon Huang (May 16, 2018). "We Made a Tool So You Can Hear Both Yanny and Laurel". The New York Times. playing the "laurel" clip over speakers and re-recording it introduced noise and exaggerated the higher frequencies.
  5. "Meet the Voice behind That 'Laurel' (or 'Yanny') Clip That's Driving Everyone Nuts". Time . Archived from the original on May 19, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  6. 1 2 "Laurel - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms". Vocabulary.com. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018.
  7. 1 2 Matsakis, Louise (May 16, 2018). "The True History of 'Yanny' and 'Laurel'". WIRED. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018.
  8. Hughes, Virginia (May 27, 2018). "We Got To The Bottom Of A Geeky Conspiracy Theory About Yanny And Laurel". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on May 27, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  9. Katie Hetzel, 15 yr old Flowery Branch High Freshman interview with Francesca Amiker on 11alive.com Archived May 29, 2018, at the Wayback Machine (published to YouTube on May 18, 2018)
  10. Hoggatt, Aja (May 15, 2018). "Is your favorite celeb a Yanny or a Laurel?". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  11. O'Kane, Caitlin (May 16, 2018). "Yanny vs. Laurel: What do you hear?". CBS News. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  12. Gray, Julia (May 16, 2018). "Yanny Or Laurel: Yanni And Laurel Halo Weigh In". Stereogum. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  13. "Laurel, Yanny or ... covfefe? White House joins in on debate". Chicago Tribune. Associated Press. May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
  14. "Donald Trump weighs in on the Yanny or Laurel debate". YouTube. Guardian News. May 18, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
  15. 1 2 Watson, Chloe (May 17, 2018). "Laurel or Yanny debate: why do some people hear a different word?". the Guardian. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  16. "Here's why you're hearing "Yanny" – and why it's technically "Laurel"". CBS News. May 17, 2018. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  17. 1 2 "Yanny - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com". www.vocabulary.com. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  18. Salam, Maya; Victor, Daniel (May 15, 2018). "Yanny or Laurel? How a Sound Clip Divided America". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  19. Ducharme, Jamie (May 16, 2018). "An Audiologist Explains Why You Hear 'Yanny' or 'Laurel' — Or Both". Time. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  20. Jackson, Amanda (May 16, 2018). "Laurel or Yanny? What science has to say". CNN. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  21. "The Psychology of Laurel and Yanny". Psychology Today. Retrieved May 29, 2018.
  22. Gutman, Rachel (May 15, 2018). "A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny'". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  23. 1 2 Molloy, Mark (May 18, 2018). "Brainstorm or Green Needle? How the latest audio riddle tricks your brain". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on May 18, 2018. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  24. Cvorak, Monika; Bullock, James (May 18, 2018). "The new Yanny/Laurel: do you hear brainstorm or green needle?". The Guardian. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  25. Shamsian, Jacob (May 17, 2018). "People are torn over whether this recording says 'brainstorm' or 'green needle'". Insider. Retrieved October 11, 2020.
  26. Marcin, Tim (August 1, 2020). "TikTok discovered 'green needle vs. brainstorm' two years later and it blew up again". Mashable.
  27. "Brainstorm or Green Needle? New audio clip has everyone more shook than Laurel and Yanny". UK. May 18, 2018.
  28. "TikTok baffled by bizarre "Oh Barbie" auditory illusion". Dexerto. November 27, 2022.
  29. Gatollari, Mustafa (December 15, 2022). "TikToker Points Out Audio Illusion in 'Toy Story 3' and Now We Can't Unhear It". Distractify.