Page 64 - Summer2017

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.