"In addition, we document a gradual decline in pitch-naming accuracy with age, characterized by a perceptual shift in the "sharp" direction."
My note to the researcher:
Dear Dr. Gitschier,
I noted with interest your incidental finding that people perceive actual pitches as sharper than their internalized or accustomed representations of them.
I would like to put that together with a common phenomenon of elderly ladies applying bright pink spots of rouge on their cheeks. This is common knowledge and experience, but is easily borne out in expert documentation; a reference I turned up quickly was
"A Guide to Elegance" by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, Doubleday 1964 and Harper Collins 2003
"Perhaps the most common error of the older woman is to place two bright spots of rouge on her cheeks, and I have often wondered if this isn't due more to failing eyesight than to lack of taste."
Anyway, there is evidently there a similar frequency shift in which the lower light frequencies are perceived as faster or 'bluer'. I couldn't say if this has an expression in clothing and home furnishing choices for the elderly etc, but some marketing information could substantiate that. The loss of the blue end and of color discrimination (compressed spectrum?) in the elderly is documented.
Beyond these examples, there is the subjective feeling we have of time passing more quickly as we age, and even the phenomenon of elderly people demanding slower speech of those around them (also usually attributable to failing senses. whatever that means).
But regardless of the physical mechanism involved, anywhere from a reduction in quality and quantity of neurotransmitters, refractory tissues and membranes, etc. the common effect seems to be a general age-based change and downward mismatch in the mapping of time-based phenomena to their interior touchstones. What I am saying is that the interior product of a lifetime of perception is probably accurate or at least stable but can no longer be associated with the degraded inputs and transmissions. I am not good enough at this moment to extend that thought to more abstract (as opposed to sensory) experiences.
"I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle
You just slow down" - Don Mclean 1971
I would be interested in learning in the relationship of the mismatch you found to the absolute frequencies tested, that is what is it's 'frequency response' ? Both of those factors (subjective time perception and its perhaps formulaic variability along a frequency spectrum) have implications for audiology and hearing-aid design.
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"In addition, we document a gradual decline in pitch-naming accuracy with age, characterized by a perceptual shift in the "sharp" direction." My note to the researcher: Dear Dr. Gitschier, I noted with interest your incidental finding that people perceive actual pitches as sharper than their internalized or accustomed representations of them. I would like to put that together with a common phenomenon of elderly ladies applying bright pink spots of rouge on their cheeks. This is common knowledge and experience, but is easily borne out in expert documentation; a reference I turned up quickly was "A Guide to Elegance" by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, Doubleday 1964 and Harper Collins 2003 "Perhaps the most common error of the older woman is to place two bright spots of rouge on her cheeks, and I have often wondered if this isn't due more to failing eyesight than to lack of taste." Anyway, there is evidently there a similar frequency shift in which the lower light frequencies are perceived as faster or 'bluer'. I couldn't say if this has an expression in clothing and home furnishing choices for the elderly etc, but some marketing information could substantiate that. The loss of the blue end and of color discrimination (compressed spectrum?) in the elderly is documented. Beyond these examples, there is the subjective feeling we have of time passing more quickly as we age, and even the phenomenon of elderly people demanding slower speech of those around them (also usually attributable to failing senses. whatever that means). But regardless of the physical mechanism involved, anywhere from a reduction in quality and quantity of neurotransmitters, refractory tissues and membranes, etc. the common effect seems to be a general age-based change and downward mismatch in the mapping of time-based phenomena to their interior touchstones. What I am saying is that the interior product of a lifetime of perception is probably accurate or at least stable but can no longer be associated with the degraded inputs and transmissions. I am not good enough at this moment to extend that thought to more abstract (as opposed to sensory) experiences. "I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle You just slow down" - Don Mclean 1971 I would be interested in learning in the relationship of the mismatch you found to the absolute frequencies tested, that is what is it's 'frequency response' ? Both of those factors (subjective time perception and its perhaps formulaic variability along a frequency spectrum) have implications for audiology and hearing-aid design.