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Topic: Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio? (Read 48840 times) previous topic - next topic
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Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #75 –
Quote from: greynol on
I can tell you first-hand that you can hear things through the power of suggestion that don't actually exist. When told that they do exist prior to taking a double-blind test when they don't actually exist you can hear them anyway to the point that you think you hear it in X but not in Y.

Woodinville has referred to the phenomena as steering.


I'm aware that can happen, but just because you are hearing things it doesn't necessarily mean those things are actually coming out of the speakers/headphones. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

Quote
Seeing that we're still nitpicking terms, the person taking a test is called the testee. The items being auditioned for testing are what are called the subjects.


Got it, thanks for clarifying

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #76 –
Quote from: greynol on
I can tell you first-hand that you can hear things through the power of suggestion that don't actually exist. When told that they do exist prior to taking a double-blind test when they don't actually exist you can hear them anyway to the point that you think you hear it in X but not in Y.

You were not the only poster who claimed to have evidence of this power of suggestion. When I read those claims I was naturally expecting references to some peer-reviewed papers. The second best thing would be detailed instructions on how to produce these effects - if it comes to it I might even set up an informal experiment among my friends.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #77 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
You were not the only poster who claimed to have evidence of this power of suggestion. When I read those claims I was naturally expecting references to some peer-reviewed papers. The second best thing would be detailed instructions on how to produce these effects - if it comes to it I might even set up an informal experiment among my friends.


The Mcgurk effect; maybe this was mentioned earlier.

short clip worth watching if you haven't.  Your brain is fooled even when you know what is happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

link to some articles:
http://tinyurl.com/mtbuglv

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #78 –
The McGurk effect is the real deal and very robust. So are other auditory illusions. I've been unable to locate any evidence for "placebo effect in audio",  "expectation bias in audio", "subject-expctation bias in audio" and similar terms.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #79 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
The McGurk effect is the real deal and very robust. So are other auditory illusions. I've been unable to locate any evidence for "placebo effect in audio",  "expectation bias in audio", "subject-expctation bias in audio" and similar terms.


I'm certainly no expert on the McGurk effect, but it seems to work in some sort of "expectation bias in audio" framework (we hear what we expect to hear). Yes, a bit of oversimplification, but ....

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #80 –
Quote from: garym on
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
The McGurk effect is the real deal and very robust. So are other auditory illusions. I've been unable to locate any evidence for "placebo effect in audio",  "expectation bias in audio", "subject-expctation bias in audio" and similar terms.


I'm certainly no expert on the McGurk effect, but it seems to work in some sort of "expectation bias in audio" framework (we hear what we expect to hear). Yes, a bit of oversimplification, but ....

In the McGurk you can make sure that you really heard what you thought heard by participating in a DBT.  The same thing is true for the Glissando illusion, the Shepart tone, etc. In these you really heard what you thought you heard.

The phenomenon we're discussing is different because it disappears after all DBTs. Well, we're still waiting on the "all". The point is that you didn't really hear anything different unless you can prove that you did in a DBT. Just saying that you really heard it is not enough.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #81 –
As was explained earlier (at least a couple of times now?), what is heard has to do with processing what is received from the outer ear by the inner ear and the lastly by the brain.  The McGurk effect demonstrates the effect the brain can have over what we hear.

Yes, I said it, what we hear.  Take the visual away and you will hear something different (assuming it affected you in the first place).  Bring the visual back and those affected will hear the wrong thing once again.

The sense of hearing involves more than the actual stimulus to the outer ears.

I don't doubt for a moment that true believers in audio-woo may actually hear something different as a result of it.

The point of requiring DBT is to remove the other influences that affect what we hear.  This is a different thing than saying it proves something isn't heard.  Hopefully a humbling ABX experience might lift the veil, forcing a paradigm shift in the true believers, causing them to re-evaluate their position and become more critical of what they hear; to make them better, more aware listeners.  Sometimes this doesn't work, leading to comments like ABX must be flawed because I can definitely hear a difference when I'm not testing.  It must be because of fatigue or it doesn't put me in the right frame of reference.  You name it, I've heard plenty of pitiful excuses.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #82 –
Quote from: greynol on
I don't doubt for a moment that true believers in audio-woo may actually hear something different as a result of it.

But here's my problem: that's a subjective belief of yours based on your personal experience. I share neither your belief nor your experience. By contrast, I can prove to anyone who accepts statistics that the McGurk effect exists. That's through objective, rational, proof.

i accept the validity of statistics. Can anybody prove to me that the phenomenon under discussion exists?

For the last time: I don't accept anecdotes and subjective experiences by themselves as evidence. If that's all that supports the phenomenon's existence, belief in it is irrational.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #83 –
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

1) Of course it isn't all that exists.

2) I don't care if you don't believe me.

3) Exactly how do you plan on using statistics to prove that the McGurk Effect is real?

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #84 –
Quote from: greynol on
1) Of course it isn't all that exists.

I don't understand this.
Quote
2) I don't care if you don't believe me.

If you want to start with puerility, so be it: I don't give a damn if you care about anything
Quote
3) Exactly how do you plan on using statistics to prove that the McGurk Effect is real?

By referencing muliple studies that establish, through statistical methods, the effect's existence and generalize the findings to rest of the human population.

But at this point I pretty much give up. If I had suspected that what passed for evidence around here were sentences that start like "I saw it myself..." or "Somebody claimed in that other thread that..." I could have been spared quite a few hours of my life. I feel like someone who signed up for a geographical convention and ended up at the annual meeting of Flat Earth Society.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #85 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 link=msg=0 date=
When patients report that their pain has diminished after eating a sugar pill they're just trying to please their doctors, or perhaps they're too polite to say that the treatment was completely ineffective, and prefer to say that there was a little improvement.

Considering your opening evaluation is STILL unsubstantiated, why should greynol (or anybody) else feed you more papers that you'll draw unsupported conclusions from?

As I said originally, that is not what the paper you cited says.

Creature of habit.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #86 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
By referencing muliple studies that establish, through statistical methods, the effect's existence and generalize the findings to rest of the human population.

I imagine you'll want me to dig this up for you as well. 

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #87 –
Quote from: TomasPin on
Quote from: Porcus on
In their definitions, as far as I read it: Placebo would be if the sugar pill treatment actually cures (at least to some extent). Not only does the patient feel better, or report to feel better, but - through this perception or otherwise - the sugar pill treatment helps rid the disease.


If that's the case, translating the definition (as it is) to audio would not be possible


It could be possible yes, for example if and when the effect of the placebo is the help from the power of the mind. I tried to construct one case in posting #51. What  if I am marketing 'revealing' loudspeakers, claiming that listeners actually pick up more artifacts with these compared to speakers at half the price? Put them to the test with, say, lossless vs near-transparent mp3s? Make three groups of listeners (large enough, blah blah blah): Group #1 listens through the expensive speakers. Group #2 listens through the cheap ones. If group #1 detect more artifacts - they really do, they score better at ABXing - does that mean that the speakers are more revealing?
Not necessary: Group #3 listens through the cheap ones, having been told they are the expensive revealing ones. What if group #3 scores better at ABXing than group #2? Explanation? What if the following did really happen: what if the information - whether true or false - that you are listening through revealing equipment, actually changes your performance? It is not farfetched - in many situations, performance is affected by the belief that you can perform better.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #88 –
Maybe I haven't read well enough in this thread but I didn't catch anyone bringing up some things that seem to me to be rather directly relevant to the question. Maybe these things have failed to be repeatable and I, not being much of a follower of the subject, have missed the refuting publications?

Surely anyone interested in the subject knows that many experiments have been published where subjects could quite reliability differentiate between signals in training trials but reported stimuli incorrectly after being deliberately mislead by the experimenters on what to expect (i.e. subjects reported in accordance with expectations rather than reality) I don't have references but I remember examples being given a great many years ago in my classes on experimental design and related psychology topics. Subjects' reports were often clear and decisive -- and just plain wrong --  when the only determining factor seem to be expectation and social influences effecting belief.

Much more recently I've read a number of popular press articles about experiments at events such as wine tasting events where "experts", and the general public alike, have been let to wax eloquently about inexpensive wines and denigrate expensive wines after the wines were secretly switched. The only article I remember off hand isn't so elaborate, but the principal seems the same
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-13072745
People though they were getting the "good" stuff so they reported experiencing the good stuff. I suppose it could be argued that the reports were only going along with social pressure or were made because of not wishing to embarrassed the hosts, or some such motive, although the consistency in results from such experiments leads me to feel that such an interpretation is stretching things a bit. another article I remember from somewhere dealt with wines being put into different bottles, so that expensive wines could be visually presented as cheap wines and cheap wines as expensive.

Then there is this report, where "brain scan"  measurements were consistent with subject responses. Of course, one could suggest that the measurements were not interpreted correctly but is there evidence from somewhere else that suggest that is really the case?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22614130/

More directly relevant was a report I wish I could find again. I believe I read it online but I don't collect most such things and have been unable to locate it again. Surely I was not the only one to see it. In this article a supposedly new technological development was reported which allows researchers to measure the response of individual neurons in the auditory cortex.

Subjects were given training trails on a selection of signals in a typical hearing test via headphones setup. These signals differences must have been near threshold (one would think) but were enough above that the subjects could reliably discriminate between them after the training. On finding was that each different signal activated a different neuron. The researches were able to definitively correlate particular brain responses with the particular inputs.

Then, in the testing part of the experiment, the subjects were sometimes led to expect one sound but actually given another. Also, some trails set up a particular expectation and no signal was provided. Subject reports were consistent with expectations, not with actual signals.
More interestingly, neuron firing in the auditory cortex was consistent with expectation, not with actual input to the ears. This seems to suggest that expectation does indeed alter the experience of reality. Obviously it is something that could stand more experimentation.

Unlike medical experiments, the researchers here were not looking for long term changes, only the immediate experience, but these results seems to suggest that patient reports of reduced pain or other improvements might indeed be more than lies or being too polite, or intimidated,  to disagree. The placebo might not effect the cancer in the gall bladder but maybe the belief in the placebo 1does effect the personal experience of the condition. What happens in the brain is not what is happening in the finger, it is a processing of some information about what is happening in the finger. People make mistakes in interpretations or conclusions all the time.

Dreams are familiar to almost everyone. People experience things in dreams that seem real while they are occurring. Sometimes dreams incorporate real world stimuli interpreted as something very different than what they really are. Hypnosis can be used to induce very real seeming experiences, involving any or all of the senses, without any tie to surrounding physical reality.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #89 –
greynol: Last night I was abducted by aliens.

gnusmas997: You're out of your mind.

greynol: Surely you don't expect me to do your research for you and actually provide proofs that substantiate my INSANE claims! Noob, LOL!

I'm starting to think that my earliar comparison was an insult to the Flat Earth Society.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #90 –
http://audioskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/03/w...ear-part-1.html

Again, I don't care whether you believe me or not.  I'm not the one on a mission here.

Further posts like this last one of yours will be binned per TOS #2 (trolling).  This is not open for debate and will be your only warning.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #91 –
Quote from: greynol on
http://audioskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/03/w...ear-part-1.html

Interesting link, but unfortunately it doesn't meet the standards of evidence to which I'm used

Quote from: greynol on
Further posts like this last one of yours will be binned per TOS #2 (trolling).  This is not open for debate and will be your only warning.

It was not meant as trolling but as an accurate parody of a line of argumentation that was consitently used throughout the thread. Did you really miss the parallel? If supporters of an undocumented aural illusion can transfer the burden of proof to the skeptic, so can believers in alien abductions.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #92 –
If anyone wants to know what a proper (though not ideal) study of an aural illusion looks like, here's a link on the McGurk effect:

http://www.isca-speech.org/archive_open/ar...01/av01_138.pdf

The researchers first set up an experiment, obtain statistically valid results and only then do they offer an explanation for these results. Even if you don't agree with their explanation, the results are still there - the McGurk effect in this specific context was more confirmed after they finished their experiment then it already was before.

Here's the abstract:
Quote
Why does audio give more [d] percepts with
visual [g] than with visual [d], as in the present
classical McGurk experiment ? An explanation
given for this asymmetry could be a language bias
towards [d]. As concerns the visual information, and
contrary to what is sometimes taken as granted in
part of the lipreading literature, visual [g] does not
give more [d] than [g] responses. In fact [d] and [g]
are neither visemically, nor auditorily equivalent.
They are fully distinguishable in audio as well as in
vision, where 80% correct identifications are current
in laboratory condition, as in the present experiment.
We show here that in spite of these highly
differenciating scores, FLMP modelling can quite
surprisingly account for such an asymmetry by
tuning very small remaining values; which is highly
unsatisfactory. We suggest another explanation for
this asymmetry which could be grounded on brain
mechanisms dedicated to the computation of
auditory and visual mouth opening movements, i.e.
audio movement and visual velocity detectors and
integrators, dedicated to the bimodal integration of
place targets in speech.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #93 –
Your aliens analogy was a straw-man argument.

Anyhow, you can be as skeptical as you wish.  It doesn't affect what I have read and heard from experts on the subject which is in harmony with my personal experience.  Also, let's not forget all the other points I've made on the matter which you dodged, waved away or simply flew over your head.  Anyway, if it isn't good enough for you then so be it.

I'll simply refer you to all the previous replies you received at this time.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #94 –
Quote from: greynol on
Anyhow, you can be as skeptical as you wish.  It doesn't affect what I have read and heard from experts on the subject which is in harmony with my personal experience.

To convince me all that would be required is experimental proof. It was hinted and sometimes stated explicitly (not necessarily by you, greynol) that such proofs were available. Look for instance at post #53, by drewfx. I've been unable to locate these proofs - is it really so insulting to ask for them?

Some of the arguments to which I haven't responded were based on general interpreations about the way the human faculty of hearing works. I don't think that this would be a productive way of settiling the problem. For starters, less is known about the hearing faculty then about illusions, and I hope we can all agree that attaining such a broad understanding of human hearing is much more difficult and time-demanding than doing a simple experiment (a la McGurk effect) to establish the existence of an illusion.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #95 –
Enjoy your continued quest for evidence.

Just don't assume there isn't any simply because you either haven't found it or have managed to twist yourself into a pretzel in order to discount or re-interpret what you have seen so far.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #96 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
Quote from: greynol on
http://audioskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/03/w...ear-part-1.html

Interesting link, but unfortunately it doesn't meet the standards of evidence to which I'm used


Really, now, why is that?

I happen to know for sure that that blog is supported by about 100 years of psychoacoustic research.

And if you wish to discuss it further with the author, well, here I am, so what's your objection?

Be specific.  I have 100+ years of research on my side.

Yours?
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #97 –
Quote from: gnusmas997 on
The McGurk effect is the real deal and very robust. So are other auditory illusions. I've been unable to locate any evidence for "placebo effect in audio",  "expectation bias in audio", "subject-expctation bias in audio" and similar terms.


Good lord, man, I gave you a link to a *textbook* that has a whole section on biases affecting sensory perception.  Do you think the authors included it purely as an act of imagination? 

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #98 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Really, now, why is that?

I happen to know for sure that that blog is supported by about 100 years of psychoacoustic research.

And if you wish to discuss it further with the author, well, here I am, so what's your objection?

Be specific.  I have 100+ years of research on my side.

Yours?

First let me make it clear that I only read the four part piece on Why We Hear What We Hear. My problem is that doesn't actually present the research but just states the conclusions. Here's an example, from part 4:
Quote
[The plasticity of forming auditory features and auditory objects] has a particularly important implication for audio enthusiasts, which is expectation will always cause you to hear things differently

What I'd like to see is a few studies that show you that the expectations will really cause to hear things differently. Not just cause you to report things differently, like in Medicine, but to actually hear them differently. For the McGurk effect this kind of evidence is widely available.

Medic. study—placebo tends to lack important effect—relevant to audio?

Reply #99 –
I thought I had made this clear earlier, but since it's a lengthy thread, I understand that no everyone might have read everything. So I'll try it again, now with an optical example.

Suppose that there are two observers of a series of moving shapes and colors in the night sky. One is an astronomer, the other an UFO enthusiast. The two see exactly the same moving shapes and colors, from more or less the same angle. The next day the astronomer reports, say, that he casually observed the movement of a comet. The UFO enthusiast, on the other hand, reports that he saw an UFO patrolling the Earth.

The perception in this case was unaltered by their expectations. The only difference was in the individual interpretations of their perceptions.

This analogy, like the medical one, is used for purposes of clarifcation only. I do not presume that hearing works like vision.