Sine-wave Speech

Has your brain learned to understand Alien?

Play the alien sound first and see if you can guess what they're saying!

C - alien
C - speech

Now try these.

D - alien
D - speech

What's going on?

The 'alien voice' is actually 'degraded speech' - sound that has been changed on a computer by researchers to make it very difficult to understand.

Once your brain has heard the words, it can 'hear' them in the 'alien' speech.


Question.png Did you find you got better at hearing the words in the 'alien' speech?


Scientists call this 'pop out'.

Life's Big Questions is best viewed on a desktop computer and tablet.
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