Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Two experiments investigated the perception of the size of a solid ball from the sound it produces when dropped upon a plate (i.e., object’s vibration contributing only slightly to the resulting pressure wave). Experiment one: listeners estimated metrically the size of seven balls when dropped upon a 215-mm-diam plate. Experiment two: a new group of listeners performed the same scaling, however, balls could be dropped either upon the 215-mm-diam plate or upon a 185-mm-diam plate. In both experiments listeners had no foregoing information about the sound-producing event. Overall, listeners’ estimations matched veridically the actual size of the balls. However, in the second experiment, listeners’ estimations were dependent on the dimension of the plate: balls were judged slightly larger when dropped on the largest plate. Results were analyzed in order to understand whether physical or acoustical features of the sound-producing event could predict the performance: the actual size of the ball resulted in the best predictor for all estimations in both experiments. Nonetheless, the difference in spectral centroid of the sound produced by the two plates could explain the different estimations obtained in the second experiment. [Work supported by European Commission, Contract No. IST-2000-25287.]</jats:p>