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tify the car, the blowing leaves, and the giggling child. The brain performs auditory scene analysis. Psychoacoustics has just begun to investigate how the brain does this. It appears to be a daunting task; it is, like Helmholtz observed, trying to look down a tube at waves on a beach and determining what caused the waves. It is likely that the next chapter in the history of psychoacoustics will be written by present and future psychoacousticians who help unravel how the brain analyzes an auditory scene.
Biosketch
Bill Yost is currently Research Professor of Speech and Hearing Science at Arizo- na State University and was Department Chair from 2007 to 2013. He received the ASA Silver Medal in Psychological and Physiological Acoustics and is a past president of the ASA. He is a Fellow of
the ASA; the American Speech, Hearing, and Language As- sociation; the Association for Psychological Sciences; and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Indi- ana University in 1970, and his research interests are in psy- choacoustics and auditory perception.
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