Al Bregman worked in Experimental Psychology for nearly 50 years, primarily studying auditory perception, but with occasional forays into visual perception as well. He directed his entire career toward understanding the way human listeners succeed in perceptually organizing the complex acoustic field into distinct sound sources and into the events and event streams they produce. Within this study area, Al made the most significant theoretical contributions of the many scientists working in the sub-discipline of auditory psychology. His conception of perceptual organization drew its main inspiration from the Gestalt psychologists, but he brought many concepts from computer science and artificial intelligence to bear on his theorizing, leading to the development of such concepts as: 1) primitive auditory scene analysis being an heuristic process to which a number of possible acoustic cues and sensory mechanisms contribute, 2) schema-based auditory organization being a selective process that draws information from the complex acoustic...
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September 2023
Research Article|
September 01 2023
Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023)
Stephen McAdams
Stephen McAdams
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
This piece was written by Stephen McAdams, with thoughts taken from Susan Pinker, Howard Steiger, Don Donderi, and Norman White.
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Music Perception (2023) 41 (1): 74–75.
Citation
Stephen McAdams; Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023). Music Perception 1 September 2023; 41 (1): 74–75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.41.1.74
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