Man can really hear the silence

Since Aristotle, scientists and philosophers have debated whether silence is ever “heard.” New experiments by Johns Hopkins University researchers in the United States may put an end to this debate.

In the new research, a famous trick called (one-is-more illusion) was used; In this way, the brains of the listeners were tricked into thinking that two separate sounds are shorter than one sound, when in fact their total duration is the same.

written by ScienceAlertBy replacing the sounds with silence, the researchers found that the described illusion was still effective. Participants perceived continuous silence as longer than two separate silences; Although their duration was generally the same. “Our work shows that “nothing” can be heard,” says Rui Jhe Goh, a graduate student in philosophy and psychology at Johns Hopkins University.

Researchers believe that since in these tricks we show the same reaction to silence as we do to sound, we really hear silence.

A total of 1000 participants were employed in seven experiments. A number of similar experiments were conducted that included incomplete silences and silences that were spaced differently. In some experiments, background sounds such as the sound of crowded restaurants and train stations were used as frames of silence, and in some the tones of the sounds were different. In all experiments, the effects were the same: apparently silence was processed in the same way as sound.