Користувач:Pamerast/Чернетка

"Yanny or Laurel" is an auditory illusion that became popular in May 2018. In the brief audio recording, 53% of over 500,000 people answered on a Twitter poll that they heard a man saying the word "Laurel", while 47% reported hearing a voice (seemingly a woman's) saying the name "Yanny".

History

The audio clip originated from a 2007 recording of the word "Laurel" from Vocabulary.com. The spread of the audio clip as an illusion most likely originated from a student of Flowery Branch High School when she posted the illusion on Instagram on May 11, 2018. The illusion reached further popularity when the student's friend posted it on Reddit the next day.It was picked up by YouTuber Cloe Feldman on her Twitter account. Notable individuals who responded to the auditory illusion included Ellen Degeneres, Stephen King, and Chrissy Teigen. Yanni and Laurel Halo, whose names are similar to those given in the auditory illusion, also responded. According to The Guardian, the clip was the most divisive subject on the internet since the gold/blue dress controversy in 2015. Later, the team at Vocabulary.com added a separate entry for the word "Yanny", which contained an audio clip identical to "Laurel".

Scientific analyses

Benjamin Munson, a professor of hearing sciences at the University of Minnesota, suggested that "Yanny" can be heard in higher frequencies while "Laurel" can be heard in lower frequencies. Older people, whose ability to hear higher frequencies is more likely to have degraded, usually hear "Laurel". Kevin Franck, the director of audiology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, told Time that the clip exists on a "perceptual boundary" and compared it to the Necker Cube illusion. Professor David Alais from the University of Sydney’s school of psychology also compared the clip to the Necker Cube or the face/vase illusion, calling it a “perceptually ambiguous stimulus”. Brad Story, a professor of speech, language, and hearing at the University of Arizona told CNN that the low-quality nature of the recording produces some ambiguity.

Part of the startling illusion is that the sound is ambiguous, but this ambiguous quality itself is not apparent to the hearer. Listeners typically report certainly that the sound is distinctly one or the other word, and that they do not hear an indefinite muddle that could be interpreted either way. A "cold" listener (who has not been given the words in advance) will typically report hearing one of the two words, but not report the other word as a possibility. A group gathered to hear an identical source played will individually report random but definite certainty for one or the other word. The variety of responses is not well predicted by physiological factors such as age-related hearing acuity.^{[джерело?]}

The New York Times released an interactive tool on their website that increases the volume of either the higher or lower frequencies and decreases the volume of the other. This changes the sound in order for the listener to hear either Yanny or Laurel, supporting Benjamin Munson's explanation. {{|}}