An Amazing Audio Illusion

Yesterday I encountered an interesting illusion online. While I’m accustomed to finding a variety of optical illusions, this one was an audio illusion. These illusions are much rarer.

I saw this shared by various people on Instagram and Reddit. Here’s the illusion; I’ll provide the source below after you have a chance to listen.

If you listen to the illusion while reading the various phrases above, you can almost feel your hearing perception change to accommodate what you’re reading. This is an excellent example of how our preconceptions can and do affect our perception and judgement.

SPOILER ALERT: If you’re wondering what the original phrase was, here’s a link that will tip the answer. Don’t click until you want to know what they were actually saying! https://youtu.be/5HRq9kfEy8o

To learn about another kind of audio illusion, check out the Wikipedia article on “Shepard Tones,” and search them out on YouTube. Here’s a video example:

And finally, here’s the first video of a YouTube series collecting several audio illusions that you may wish to explore.

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2 Responses

  1. That was amazing! There were a few I couldn’t quite hear, but I could certainly hear a variety of different things, depending on what I was reading at the time.

    1. It is an interesting reminder that our assumptions can affect what would normally seem to be pretty objective observations.

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