Page 64 - Summer2017
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Sound Perspectives
Kenneth J. de Jong
Postal:
Indiana University 859 Ballantine Hall Bloomington, Indiana 47401 USA
Email:
kdejong@indiana.edu
Terrin Tamati
Postal:
University Medical Center Groningen University of Groningen Hanzeplein 1 9713 GZ Groningen The Netherlands
Email:
t.n.tamati@umcg.nl
Shape of the ASA:
Similarity Relationships Among the Society’s Technical Areas
The shape of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) has grown, from its early conception toward decentralization of control over the functions of the Society to 13 separate technical areas (see Table 1). These technical areas, which are in charge of constructing the biannual conference program, have evolved over the years into constituencies with fairly distinct cultures of practice.
The ASA meetings draw members from different disciplines but with a common interest in various aspects of acoustics. This, after all, is why there is one society for all things acoustic. As organizers of the Fall 2014 ASA meeting in Indianapolis, we were tasked with placing the 13 areas in different rooms of the conference venue. Beyond finding space for each area, there was the additional challenge that mem- bers generally attend sessions in more than one technical area.
This logistical challenge actually presents a larger intellectual puzzle. How do these different technical areas coexist in the same society? In one room, one can find papers on tongue motor control in speakers of poorly documented languages and in the next room, talks on the acoustics of ship propellers.
Such conceptual cohesion problems are very common in cognitive psychology, and their structures are commonly encountered in various experimental para- digms. Dating from the 1950s, the concept of a psychological space inhabited by
Table 1. Counts of members’ primary and secondary interests in the 13 technical areas of the Acoustical Society of America
      AA
  EA
  MA
  N
  PA
  PP
  SA
  SC
  UA
  BA
  AB
  AO
  SP
 Total
  AA
     72
  90
  191
  11
  33
  27
  8
  4
  1
  1
    15
  453
  EA
   167
    34
  170
  145
  20
  109
  4
  62
  43
  4
  2
  70
  830
  MA
    180
   41
      9
   32
   61
   15
   45
   12
   6
   5
   1
   32
   439
  N
  389
 110
 11
  41
 78
 83
 12
 15
 5
 29
 2
 30
 805
  PA
   23
  125
  51
  43
    14
  30
  24
  57
  125
  1
  2
  40
  535
  PP
   52
  26
  65
  70
  10
    4
  547
  1
  16
  57
  1
  46
  895
  SA
   64
  105
  30
  105
  77
  7
    1
  39
  14
  2
  1
  25
  470
  SC
    35
   14
   32
   8
   3
   363
   2
      1
   4
   12
      77
   551
  UA
  2
 46
 4
 11
 78
 5
 45
 2
  12
 123
 130
 95
 553
  BA
   1
  18
  7
  6
  59
  29
  7
  22
  9
    3
  1
  16
  178
  AB
    3
   2
   3
   7
   3
   69
   3
   16
   49
   7
      19
   11
   192
  AO
   2
 1
  7
   1
 245
 3
 44
  9
 312
  SP
   35
  88
  58
  22
  100
  103
  34
  207
  191
  43
  27
  5
    913
  Total
    951
   649
   386
   642
   566
   782
   359
   889
   685
   279
   308
   164
   466
   7,126
 Columns are primary interests and rows are secondary interests. AA, architectural acoustics; AB, animal bioacoustics; AO, acoustical oceanography; BA, biomedical acoustics; EA, engineering acoustics; MA, musical acoustics; N, noise; PA, physical acoustics; PP, psychological and physiological acoustics; SA, structural acoustics and vibration; SC, speech communication; SP, signal processing; UA, underwater acoustics.
62 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2017 | volume 13, issue 2 ©2017 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.
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