Why Your Brain Hears One or the Other in This Maddening Illusion
Sound frequencies “Basically, there is no ‘true’ word and the stimulus has ‘clues’ based on the formant frequencies that point to either one or the other word,” Oxenham said. A formant refers to the frequencies that carry the most energy when a sound is made, and they depend on the different parts of a person’s vocal tract.
The shape of the tract and the resulting frequencies that come out when a person speaks are due to the placement of the tongue, according to psycholinguist Suzy Styles of the Nanyang Technological University, who tweeted about the Yanny/Laurel [...]