美国研究人员认为：不只是音量过小或调节不当导致手机那头的声音难以听到。According to research to be presented this week at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Diego, mobile phones also cut off the highest-pitched ranges of our voices. 据这星期在圣地亚哥美国声学协会的年度会议调查，证实了这个结论：手机屏蔽了声音中的高声调波段。 Those high-frequency sounds convey a surprising amount of information, says Dr Brian Monson, from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 来自盐湖城犹他大学的布莱恩曼森表示，这些高频率的声音蕴藏了巨大的信息。 His research suggests that we may be missing the full meaning of what people say when we talk to them on our mobile devices. 他的研究表明：当我们用移动设备与人们沟通时，可能遗失他们表达的完整意思。 "The prevailing thought was that, because high frequencies are not as loud in the voice, that the brain must not pay much attention to them," says Monson, a speech and hearing scientist. 语言学、声学专家曼森说：“普遍的看法是——因为在手机中高声调并不如谈话中明显，大脑需要对它们格外关注。” "If the brain is paying that much attention to high frequencies, there must be some kind of perceptual information there." “如果大脑正格外关注高频率，那部分一定有些可感知的信息。” Assumption questioned 质疑假设 A typical male voice measures about 100 hertz and an average woman speaks at about 200 hertz. 一个标准男性声音频率范围在100HZ左右，女性在200左右。 Unlike a monotonic sound like a whistle, voices also contain quieter overtones with frequencies that range as high as 20,000 hertz. 不同于单声调的口哨，语言也包括更安静的泛音，频率高达20000HZ。 But because most of the energy in our voices falls below 5,000 hertz, scientists have long assumed that those high-pitched sounds are irrelevant.但因为大多数人类声调能量在5000HZ以下，科学家一直假定高音调与此不相关。 Monson, who is also a singer with experience as a sound engineer, started to suspect that assumption a few years ago. 曼森同时是一个演唱家——有音响师的经验——几年前已经开始怀疑这个假设。 While working with other singers, he noticed that they improved the quality of their voices by making adjustments in very high frequency overtones.在和其他歌手合作时，他注意到他们在高频率的泛音做出调整来改善歌声的质量。 In a follow-up project, he found that people could detect tiny differences in the volume of high-frequency sounds - on the scale of just a few decibels. 在进一步的研究中，他发现人能察觉到在高频率声音中极微小的差别——哪怕只在几分贝的范围内。 Listening tests For the new study, Monson recorded people speaking and singing the Star-Spangled Banner. He filtered the recordings to keep only sounds above 5,000 hertz.为了展开新的研究，曼森记录人们谈论和演唱美国国歌的声音。通过将记录过滤，他只保留了在5000HZ以上的声音。 He played those recordings to about 50 people in a handful of experiments. Then, he asked listeners to try to identify details about what they heard.他在一个50人的小型的实验中重播这些记录。然后，他试着让听者确定听到歌的细节。 He was surprised at how well people did. Even though the recordings sound much like cricket chirps, just about everyone was able to quickly distinguish between talking and singing.他被人们出色的表现震惊了。尽管这些记录听起来很像蟋蟀叫，但几乎每个人都能很快的区分谈论与歌唱。 It took listeners a little longer to tell whether the voice was male or female, but they all did that task really well, too. 在回答声音来源者的性别时稍微多花些时间，但他们依然圆满的完成任务。 Most surprising of all based on the current understanding of sound recognition, says Monson, listeners could tell that they were hearing the Star-Spangled Banner, not just when the voices were singing but also when they were just speaking. 曼森惊叹，最惊奇的是对于现有声音识别的理解。听者知道自己听的正是美国国歌，不只是歌声中、也包括谈话的时候。 People were even able to identify key information about the recordings when distracting noises were added to make the task harder. 即使为了加大难度，加入噪音干扰，人依然能识别记录中的关键信息。 "If they can understand what's being said, that means there's an ability to extract intelligible information from high frequencies, and nobody would have predicted that," says Monson. 曼森认为：如果他们能理解记录中说的是什么，那意味人类有一种从高音区提取可识别信息的能力，这是之前没人预测过的。 "If you're in a situation where there's low-frequency noise covering all of the information you're used to getting from a voice, as long as you have the high-frequency stuff, you can still figure out what the person is saying and get the information you need." 假如你处于一个充满低频噪音的情景，噪音掩盖了所有你曾从语音中获取的信息。只要有泛音填充，你依然能别明白人们正讨论什么并得到有用的信息。 That may be why talking on a cell phone in noisy places is so tough. Most mobile phones and landlines transmit sounds up to about 3,500 hertz, mostly because higher-frequency sounds were never thought to be very important.也许这就是为什么在嘈杂的地方通电话让人崩溃。大多数手机和语音传输线路只到3500HZ，主要因为高频音从没被认为多重要。 Fatiguing phone conversations 疲倦的通话 According to other research, our brains have to work harder to extract information when it comes in limited bandwidth, Monson says, which explains why phone conversations can be more fatiguing than talking in person. 据另一项研究，人类的大脑在限制波段获取信息更吃力。麦森认为，这可以解释为什么通话比与人谈话更让人疲倦。 And studies in kids have shown that they learn new words three times more quickly if they hear recordings that range up to 9,000 hertz instead of 4,000 hertz.在孩子的一项研究表明：与4000HZ声音记录相比，听9000HZ的记录，他们学习新单词速度提高了三倍。 To improve the quality of our mobile phone conversations, the new findings suggest that it may be time for a technology upgrade. 为了改善人们手机通话质量，这个新发现暗示技术升级的时候也许到了。 "We listen to things over cell phones in pretty adverse situations, and I think their data strongly suggests you can give the listener more information by keeping high frequencies salient," says Dr William Yost, an auditory perception researcher at Arizona State University in Tempe. 来自坦佩亚利桑那州立大学的听觉研究员威廉约斯特说道：“我们在相当糟糕的环境里听着电话里的事情，我认为他们的数据清楚的表明——保持明显、高频率有助于你传达更多的信息给听者。” |
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