The Relation of Analytic and Synthetic Listening Strategies

Perceptual weights give a measure of the attentional strategies individuals use in analyzing complex sounds. Analytic strategies and synthetic strategies have long been established as two opposing primary modes of parsing sonic information, but their relationship has not been fully explored. In the present study participants completed two listening tasks: one following an analytical design, the other with a synthetic design. Perceptual weighting patterns were obtained from each participant. Analyses of these data revealed that analytic listeners performed better on synthetic listening tasks than listeners with a purely synthetic listening strategy, t(10) = 14.23, p<0.0001