Neuroscientists affiliated with Technische Universitat Dresden found that we “hear” what we expect to hear. A press release from TU Dresden reports that “neuroscience research has revealed that the cerebral cortex constantly generates predictions on what will happen next, and that neurons in charge of sensory processing only encode the difference between our predictions and the actual reality – new findings show that not only the cerebral cortex, but the entire auditory pathway, represents sounds according to prior expectations. Dr. Alejandro Tabas, first author of the publication, states on the findings: ‘Our subjective beliefs on the physical world have a decisive role on how we perceive reality. . . . All that we perceive might be deeply contaminated by our subjective beliefs on the physical world.’”
“We Hear What We Expect to Hear.” 2021. Press release, Technische Universitat Dresden, https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/menschen-hoeren-das-was-sie-zu-hoeren-erwarten
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.