5 ms·

That's not the only reason why children hear more and louder. When you're in your '30s you already have a minor hearing loss, you don't hear all sounds and nois

by akerro 7y ago

That's not the only reason why children hear more and louder. When you're in your '30s you already have a minor hearing loss, you don't hear all sounds and noises then you did when you were 5. Children see more colours as well.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Also, we hear using the cochlea, a spiral sense organ that sorts sound by frequency. In children the whole thing is much smaller. So they hear much-smaller wavelengths of sound which means higher-pitched sound. As we grow so does the cochlea so we hear lower and lower sounds and lose the sensitivity to the highest-pitched ones? I'm guessing that hair dryers have a scream in the upper register that adults don't normally hear.
- simias 7y ago
  That's very possible indeed. I remember when I was a kid my grandparent's tube TV was making a high-pitched sound that was figuratively driving me insane (maybe generated from the HSYNC frequency, now that I think about it). I couldn't understand how they could bear it but of course when I told them they didn't get it because it was probably way outside of their hearing range. I'm fairly sure that now that I'm in my 30s I couldn't hear it either.
  - BorgHunter 7y ago
    Typically a high-pitched whine from a CRT is from the flyback transformer. I found, when I was a kid, that sometimes a well-placed whack on the CRT's cabinet could temporarily fix the problem. Nowadays, I have no idea if I can hear that whine anymore or not, as CRTs are quite uncommon. Probably not. Much for the better, as it used to give me headaches.
  - h2odragon 7y ago
    15Khz colorburst whine. Its amusing how many audio recordings even today show a notch filter used at that frequency, years after there were no CRTs anywhere in the recording process.
    - hunter2_ 7y ago
      There are recordings that really should have had it! https://open.spotify.com/track/3B4q6KbHbGV51HO3GznBFF?si=FgyYetBTSUGzQGG8i2kywQ https://open.spotify.com/track/3B4q6KbHbGV51HO3GznBFF?si=Fgy... https://open.spotify.com/track/6PsISpFaCEKwysPfwO9SfC?si=NQar6jiKSpOU5hlzUsO7PQ https://open.spotify.com/track/6PsISpFaCEKwysPfwO9SfC?si=NQa... (Or if these whines aren't CRT related, I'd be curious to learn the source).
    - LocalH 7y ago
      Flyback, not colorburst. Monochrome sets should exhibit the whine as well.
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    You might still be able to hear it. https://youtu.be/8XzNh5U8Jzw https://youtu.be/8XzNh5U8Jzw https://youtu.be/rkEQ0b35nzw https://youtu.be/rkEQ0b35nzw
  - papln 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito > The Mosquito or Mosquito alarm is a hand wound machine used to deter loitering by young people by emitting sound at high frequency, in some versions so it can be heard mostly by younger people. > The sound was made into a mobile phone ringtone, which could not be heard by teachers if the phone rang during a class.
    - song 7y ago
      At 35, I'm still deeply bothered by that sound. Slightly related but in a lot of parts of Ginza in Tokyo, they use a similar sound for repelling rats that I find extremely uncomfortable...
  - Crinus 7y ago
    I have read this many times online and i think i must be the only one who for some reason liked that CRT sound :-P Though it might be that since i really loved computers, i associated it with computers and liked it via association.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    I was quite surprised as a young adult when one of my ears couldn't hear cricket chirps anymore. If I laid with one ear against the pillow I could hear them, but if I turned over it was silent. A hearing test confirmed that one ear was deficient.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    I'm 39 and I can still hear 15kHz flyback. Not as loudly as I used to be able to, but it's still there.
- Geimfari 7y ago
  It's not due to cochlear size, we lose sensitivity to high frequencies because the hair cells slowly degenerate with age.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    It's not only due to size...
- derefr 7y ago
  Does that mean that children also don’t hear deep bass? Is it commonly accepted that young children don’t enjoy the sort of music (e.g. dubstep, drum-and-bass) that employs near-infrasonic notes?
  - whenchamenia 7y ago
    Even as adults, you feel anything below 45hz or so more than you hear it. I am confident that children feel too. But the bass heavy club music ypu describe has an adult cultural element, otherwise missing from most music.
  - simias 7y ago
    An other thing to consider with deep bass is that, at least in concert/club conditions, you feel the bass with your body on top of hearing it. So even if your ear struggles to capture those low frequencies you'll still experience them somewhat.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Balgair 7y ago
  This is not true. The dimensions of the cochlea are basically fixed at the time of birth. As the dimensions of the cochlea are the main contributing factor in what tones are able to be heard, the tonal bandwidths are then set at birth as well (minus hearing loss due to damage as we age). If you are interested in how sound is interperted by the brain, be aware that it is not a straightforward process and takes a bit of research. Still, the cochlea is essentially fixed at the time of birth. More on how the dimensions of the cochlea determine tonal bandwidths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970226/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970226/ [1] http://www.ajnr.org/content/ajnr/early/2011/09/29/ajnr.A2713.full.pdf http://www.ajnr.org/content/ajnr/early/2011/09/29/ajnr.A2713...
jerf 7y ago
"Children see more colours as well." I'd be interested in hearing more about this. I understand the mechanism whereby audio sensitivity is progressively lost but I don't see why getting older would result in seeing fewer colors. Is this perhaps instead that we are less sensitive to color, requiring more photons to have the same color experience, but not actually seeing "fewer colors" in the sense that there are colors that fall off our gamut entirely? That would make sense to me.
- papln 7y ago
  discrimation (horizontal) vs sensitivity (vertical) As we age, we lose some hearing power and visual acuity, for physical reasons on the organs. As our brains mature, they learn to not discrimate among certain "unimportant" sounds and colors. Adults can't lose the ability to disambiguate among novel language phonemes from foreign languages (as perfectly as kids can), and similarly they lose ability to distinguish similar colors that they learned are irrelevant. This isa tradeoff adaptation, so you can see a shadow gradient as single color instead of a complex spectrum, understand that traffic lights are showing the same signal despite variation in frequency, etc. On another level, very small children (babies) have poor color vision, because their eyes and brains are still missing basic development. So it's a curve: newborns have poor hearing and vision tha rapidly improves for a few years and then decays slowly, for both physical breakdown and for mental "optimization"
Balgair 7y ago
Children do not see more colors than adults. The cone cell of the human eye is the main type of photoreceptor that senses differences in light bandwidth, aka color. The dics of the cone cell are tuned to be receptive to certain bandwidths of light. These bandwidths are well understood and do not change as humans age (outside of damage to them)[0]. Humans only have 3 sets of these cones and do not gain or loose new types of cones as we age. The receptive bandwidths of the pigments are set by the biophysics of the molecules. The perception of color does change as humans age, however. Typically, a newborn cannot yet use their eyes well. They can percieve light and dark, then red, then they can process depth, etc. This learning process takes a few weeks to months[1]. The cognition of color is a very in depth and facinating field. Thus far, it appears that color is a cultural and learned thing, in that if your language does not have a word for a color, it seems to be very difficult to determine the color as a different one from among other colors. Translating the mix of photons that your photreceptors are affected by into usable language is a very complicated process and is not well understood yet. Fun Fact: The Illiad does not include the word blue and the Bible uses it very rarely as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell [1] http://www.bausch.com/vision-and-age/infant-eyes/eye-development http://www.bausch.com/vision-and-age/infant-eyes/eye-develop...
- aerophilic 7y ago
  A great podcast on color from radio lab if you haven’t already heard it: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211119-colors https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211119-colors In short they specifically go into how we perceive color etc. great show!

by akerro 7y ago

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Also, we hear using the cochlea, a spiral sense organ that sorts sound by frequency. In children the whole thing is much smaller. So they hear much-smaller wavelengths of sound which means higher-pitched sound. As we grow so does the cochlea so we hear lower and lower sounds and lose the sensitivity to the highest-pitched ones? I'm guessing that hair dryers have a scream in the upper register that adults don't normally hear.

simias 7y ago
That's very possible indeed. I remember when I was a kid my grandparent's tube TV was making a high-pitched sound that was figuratively driving me insane (maybe generated from the HSYNC frequency, now that I think about it). I couldn't understand how they could bear it but of course when I told them they didn't get it because it was probably way outside of their hearing range. I'm fairly sure that now that I'm in my 30s I couldn't hear it either.
- BorgHunter 7y ago
  Typically a high-pitched whine from a CRT is from the flyback transformer. I found, when I was a kid, that sometimes a well-placed whack on the CRT's cabinet could temporarily fix the problem. Nowadays, I have no idea if I can hear that whine anymore or not, as CRTs are quite uncommon. Probably not. Much for the better, as it used to give me headaches.
- h2odragon 7y ago
  15Khz colorburst whine. Its amusing how many audio recordings even today show a notch filter used at that frequency, years after there were no CRTs anywhere in the recording process.
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    There are recordings that really should have had it! https://open.spotify.com/track/3B4q6KbHbGV51HO3GznBFF?si=FgyYetBTSUGzQGG8i2kywQ https://open.spotify.com/track/3B4q6KbHbGV51HO3GznBFF?si=Fgy... https://open.spotify.com/track/6PsISpFaCEKwysPfwO9SfC?si=NQar6jiKSpOU5hlzUsO7PQ https://open.spotify.com/track/6PsISpFaCEKwysPfwO9SfC?si=NQa... (Or if these whines aren't CRT related, I'd be curious to learn the source).
  - LocalH 7y ago
    Flyback, not colorburst. Monochrome sets should exhibit the whine as well.
- hunter2_ 7y ago
  You might still be able to hear it. https://youtu.be/8XzNh5U8Jzw https://youtu.be/8XzNh5U8Jzw https://youtu.be/rkEQ0b35nzw https://youtu.be/rkEQ0b35nzw
- papln 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito > The Mosquito or Mosquito alarm is a hand wound machine used to deter loitering by young people by emitting sound at high frequency, in some versions so it can be heard mostly by younger people. > The sound was made into a mobile phone ringtone, which could not be heard by teachers if the phone rang during a class.
  - song 7y ago
    At 35, I'm still deeply bothered by that sound. Slightly related but in a lot of parts of Ginza in Tokyo, they use a similar sound for repelling rats that I find extremely uncomfortable...
- Crinus 7y ago
  I have read this many times online and i think i must be the only one who for some reason liked that CRT sound :-P Though it might be that since i really loved computers, i associated it with computers and liked it via association.
- mark-r 7y ago
  I was quite surprised as a young adult when one of my ears couldn't hear cricket chirps anymore. If I laid with one ear against the pillow I could hear them, but if I turned over it was silent. A hearing test confirmed that one ear was deficient.
- LocalH 7y ago
  I'm 39 and I can still hear 15kHz flyback. Not as loudly as I used to be able to, but it's still there.
Geimfari 7y ago
It's not due to cochlear size, we lose sensitivity to high frequencies because the hair cells slowly degenerate with age.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  It's not only due to size...
derefr 7y ago
Does that mean that children also don’t hear deep bass? Is it commonly accepted that young children don’t enjoy the sort of music (e.g. dubstep, drum-and-bass) that employs near-infrasonic notes?
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Even as adults, you feel anything below 45hz or so more than you hear it. I am confident that children feel too. But the bass heavy club music ypu describe has an adult cultural element, otherwise missing from most music.
- simias 7y ago
  An other thing to consider with deep bass is that, at least in concert/club conditions, you feel the bass with your body on top of hearing it. So even if your ear struggles to capture those low frequencies you'll still experience them somewhat.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Balgair 7y ago
This is not true. The dimensions of the cochlea are basically fixed at the time of birth. As the dimensions of the cochlea are the main contributing factor in what tones are able to be heard, the tonal bandwidths are then set at birth as well (minus hearing loss due to damage as we age). If you are interested in how sound is interperted by the brain, be aware that it is not a straightforward process and takes a bit of research. Still, the cochlea is essentially fixed at the time of birth. More on how the dimensions of the cochlea determine tonal bandwidths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970226/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970226/ [1] http://www.ajnr.org/content/ajnr/early/2011/09/29/ajnr.A2713.full.pdf http://www.ajnr.org/content/ajnr/early/2011/09/29/ajnr.A2713...

jerf 7y ago

"Children see more colours as well." I'd be interested in hearing more about this. I understand the mechanism whereby audio sensitivity is progressively lost but I don't see why getting older would result in seeing fewer colors. Is this perhaps instead that we are less sensitive to color, requiring more photons to have the same color experience, but not actually seeing "fewer colors" in the sense that there are colors that fall off our gamut entirely? That would make sense to me.

papln 7y ago
discrimation (horizontal) vs sensitivity (vertical) As we age, we lose some hearing power and visual acuity, for physical reasons on the organs. As our brains mature, they learn to not discrimate among certain "unimportant" sounds and colors. Adults can't lose the ability to disambiguate among novel language phonemes from foreign languages (as perfectly as kids can), and similarly they lose ability to distinguish similar colors that they learned are irrelevant. This isa tradeoff adaptation, so you can see a shadow gradient as single color instead of a complex spectrum, understand that traffic lights are showing the same signal despite variation in frequency, etc. On another level, very small children (babies) have poor color vision, because their eyes and brains are still missing basic development. So it's a curve: newborns have poor hearing and vision tha rapidly improves for a few years and then decays slowly, for both physical breakdown and for mental "optimization"

Balgair 7y ago

Children do not see more colors than adults. The cone cell of the human eye is the main type of photoreceptor that senses differences in light bandwidth, aka color. The dics of the cone cell are tuned to be receptive to certain bandwidths of light. These bandwidths are well understood and do not change as humans age (outside of damage to them)[0]. Humans only have 3 sets of these cones and do not gain or loose new types of cones as we age. The receptive bandwidths of the pigments are set by the biophysics of the molecules. The perception of color does change as humans age, however. Typically, a newborn cannot yet use their eyes well. They can percieve light and dark, then red, then they can process depth, etc. This learning process takes a few weeks to months[1]. The cognition of color is a very in depth and facinating field. Thus far, it appears that color is a cultural and learned thing, in that if your language does not have a word for a color, it seems to be very difficult to determine the color as a different one from among other colors. Translating the mix of photons that your photreceptors are affected by into usable language is a very complicated process and is not well understood yet. Fun Fact: The Illiad does not include the word blue and the Bible uses it very rarely as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell [1] http://www.bausch.com/vision-and-age/infant-eyes/eye-development http://www.bausch.com/vision-and-age/infant-eyes/eye-develop...

aerophilic 7y ago
A great podcast on color from radio lab if you haven’t already heard it: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211119-colors https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211119-colors In short they specifically go into how we perceive color etc. great show!