The role of perception in audiovisual elicitation of somatosensation (AVES) – an investigation of somatic distribution and individual differences

Cortical auditory modelling has gained traction in the past few years. Particularly, the caudal auditory fields have been theorised to play a role in auditory-somatosensory and auditory-spatial convergence in humans but is yet to be tested empirically. The challenge is identifying a viable medium to investigate such cross-modal interactions. To this end, a relatively recent perceptual phenomenon known as the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) was theorised as a candidate to explore these neural cross-modal relationships. ASMR is described as a pleasant experience encompassing a somatosensory tingling sensation and feeling of relaxation characteristically reported to be emotionally positive and triggered via audiovisual stimulation. Despite a growing literature that has attributed the response with phenomenological characteristics, as well as personality and empathic, physiological, and neural profiles, there is still no mechanistic account of ASMR. There is also a comparison between ASMR and other similar perceptual phenomena including synaesthesia, frisson, and misophonia. With ASMR research on the rise, it is surprising to find no literature review to cover and bridge the present understandings of the phenomenon. This thesis introduces the theory behind auditory cross-modal integration followed by two literature reviews encompassing all aspects of ASMR covered within the literature and beyond. Proceeding this is a collection of studies that have explored the phenomenology of, and association between ASMR and other perceptual phenomena including mirror-touch synaesthesia (MTS) and misophonia. The thesis will end with an overall conclusion and future research

Evidence for Two Mechanisms to Account for the Speech to Song Illusion, the Verbal Transformation Effect, and the Sound to Music Illusion

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Auditory Perception & Cognition on 25 Jul 2023, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/25742442.2023.2240223.Introduction Five studies examined the speech to song illusion, the verbal transformation effect, and the sound to music illusion in order to determine if they were distinct phenomena and to assess if they could be accounted for by a single perceptual/cognitive mechanism. Methods In Study 1, word lists varying in length from 1 word (as often used to study the verbal transformation effect) to 4 words (as often used to study the speech to song illusion) were presented to participants for 4 minutes to investigate the percepts that were elicited. In Study 2 participants were asked to indicate YES/NO if they experienced the speech to song illusion when listening to word-lists modified by a vocoder. In Studies 3–5 participants were asked to click a button as soon as the shift in percept occurred from speech (or sound) to a music-like percept to assess the time-course of the speech to song (or sound to music) illusion. Results Study 1 shows that the verbal transformation effect and the speech to song illusion elicit similar percepts. In Study 2 participants indicated that the speech-like stimuli elicited the speech to song illusion more than the noise-like stimuli. In Studies 3–5 similar time-courses were observed for the speech to song illusion and the sound to music illusion. Discussion Previous, single-mechanism accounts of the speech to song illusion are discussed, but none of them adequately account for all of the results presented here. A new model is proposed that appeals to both a perceptual/“lower-level” mechanism and a cognitive/“higher-level” mechanism

Headphone listening: space, embodiment, materiality

In this thesis, I adopt an empirically driven phenomenological approach to study the perceptual experiences of contemporary headphone users, analysing data collected through interviews with an array of listeners to crystallize novel conceptual models. While existing headphone-listening research has attended more precisely to sociological concerns, the project of the thesis is to engage in greater depth with the perceptual-phenomenological realities of such practices and their philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic consequences, drawing especially from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology of perception to do so. I ask a series of research questions that probe various facets of headphone listening, all of which are constructed in the light of three relationally conceived themes: space, embodiment, and materiality. First (Chapter 2), I investigate the perceived spatial location of headphone sound in relation to the body, interrogating certain issues surrounding the phenomenology of in-head sound localization to theorize the notion of sonic floodings. Second (Chapter 3), I account for the intimacy of listening to mediated voices through headphones, examining how the body of the voice is perceived in spatial terms to conceive of the intercorporeal incorporation of virtual bodies during headphone listening. Third (Chapter 4), I move to the edges of the body, investigating how the materiality of headphone technologies can enter into a listener’s awareness over time as a fleshly extension of the listening body. Fourth (Chapter 5), I query the received portrait of headphone listening as an intrinsically anti-social practice by attending to the interpenetrations of the ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ lifeworlds of the headphone user. The result is an account of headphone listening that aims to challenge, nuance, and extend prevailing scholarly accounts, one structured as an embodied-spatial trajectory that blossoms outwards from the perceived interior of the lived body through the skin towards the wider intersubjective lifeworld

Neuroqueer(ing) Noise: A/autisms, affect and more-than-sonic pedagogies in an integrated early childhood classroom

In this thesis, I experiment with affect theories to think about neurodiversity, music composition, and early childhood pedagogy: this thesis sits at the intersection of social practice art and empirical social science research to craft new techniques for researchingwith sound-based methods and A/autistic practices. Drawing from critical disability studies, including crip and neuroqueer theories, and ‘post’ philosophies, I explore how neurodivergence comes to be formulated in the early childhood classroom at the intersection of racialising, abling/disabling, and Anglo-centric assemblages, challenging biocentric notions of A/autisms as residing ‘in’ a bounded body(mind) and the A/autist(ic) as a cohesive ‘type’ of person. At the same time, I keep hold of the valuable political work of A/autistic identity. I illustrate the generative friction between these perspectives with my stylised writing of A/autisms. In this thesis, I experiment with sound-based research and practice, through the process of music composition, audio recordings, and the sonified outputs of electrodermal activity devices (EDA): I explore the ethical and methodological challenges of researching with EDA in the classroom. This thesis offers two conceptual contributions for researching in early childhood settings. The first contribution is music composition research-creation, which is an artistic method for conducting sound-based research. The second contribution is A/autisms, which is an organising concept for doing critical disability research in education by keeping hold of the generative friction between disability identity, the material reality of disability, and the messiness of the label ‘autism’. I suggest that the concept A/autisms has implications not just for research in the field of critical disability studies in education, or in early childhood education, but also more broadly in how researchers orient towards the human subject in contemporary social science scholarship that draws from ‘post’ philosophies. Thus, I suggest A/autisms as method(ology). Rather than seek solely to improve educational provision for neurodivergent young people—although I intend to do that too—I hint at the ways that divergence is formulated moment-by-moment in the pedagogical encounter and how (infrequently, momentarily) divergence can be defamiliarised. In these ways, these new concepts emphasise the relationality of the (racialised, disabled) child’s body(mind) at the same time as keeping hold of the need for a dis-identitarian politics of disability. I frame this politics using neuroqueer theory. This thesis is animated by a 14-month in-school music composition researchcreation study called Neuroqueer(ing) Noise, which was a series of projects with a class of Year 1 (later Year 2) children. The study explores the instability of ‘neurotypicality’ at the intersection of racializing and abling/disabling processes. This study also experiments with and problematises electrodermal activity as method. I also think with my ongoing music composition research-creation study Oblique Curiosities

Mediated messages: constructions of intimate communication through the use of digital technologies, and the extent to which such encounters can be conceptualised as one-to-one performance

In the 21st Century a majority of the world’s population carry in their pockets devices that promise connection to others over distance. The instant connectivity offered by technologies of communication is somewhat of mixed blessing combining the allure of interaction and the threat of availability. Much of the advertising gloss for the technologies of communication – smartphones, video conferencing and social networks – relies on selling the idea of real human connection at a distance. This study sets out to explore the nature of mediated communications between individuals in the context of a perceived opposition that conceptualises technology as either distancing or enhancing what it is to be human. The research frames mediated interactions as one-to-one performance, an approach which encourages the unexpected and playful whist embracing vulnerability. In exploring the nature of the one-to-one performance scholars and audiences stress their experiences as personal, at times intense and certainly intimate. Here intimacy is engaged with as both a subconscious technological fluency as well as intrapersonal closeness, placing such interaction in the socio-cultural context of late capitalism. It is concluded that rather than technology enframing a commodified experience of the world, intimate interrelations are possible and inevitable. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the research question and contextualises the inquiry in regard to my own personal and professional background. Chapter 2 details relevant concepts, scholarship, performance practice and cultural context and serves to place the work in a lineage of other practice. Chapter 3 describes, documents and interrogates the research practice, including inspirations and experiments alongside the final works. Chapter 4 conceptualises the practice within a phenomenological framework, analysing contemporary communications technologies as part of an expanding perceptual toolset with which we co-shape our reality and placing technical infrastructure within a framework of late capitalism. The final chapter concludes the complimentary writing and clearly enumerates the findings

War and Peace in American Seduction: Seduction Communities, Heterosexual Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy in New York City

Don Juan clearly didn’t need any training in flirting skills, but many American men feel they need help. In nearly every major city of North America exists a seduction community: a community of men who train each other to pick up women. Along with digital means for meeting strangers, these communities have emerged over the past 15 years from a subculture to become a globalized industry in seduction training spanning from Brooklyn to Beijing. From online forums and subscription-based clubs to week-long intensive training courses known as bootcamps, hundreds of thousands of men participate in these groups at different levels of engagement. This dissertation asks, what gender does seduction training produce? Based on original ethnographic fieldwork carried out in New York City between 2015-2016, this dissertation explores how and why men pursue seduction training – and what becomes of them and their social relationships. I argue that seduction is a form of mediated intimacy that envisions the other person as a stage for self-aggrandizement. Two things follow: one, seducers lose out on the sense of human connection that they originally intended to get. Two, seduction training becomes less about seducing women than about masculine self-help. In other words, it’s about men learning to have connections and build relationships with other men that give them a meaningful sense of identity. In fact, seduction training both reproduces and contradicts cultural norms of so-called hegemonic masculinity in the U.S. It does so because these men experience culturally-specific ambivalences around norms of self-help – including ideas of freedom, dependency, and addiction – in ways that complicate heteronormative masculine identities. I furthermore assert that self-fashioning through seduction training invokes ideas of work and play to differentiate contradictory ethics of persuasion and self-expression, and that these ideas in turn instantiate different technologies of embodiment that reproduce inequalities between men along lines of race and class