Son's Strange Quirk...

[M.D. Holloway]

Last night, our Son was eating a bowl of ice cream at the table and I was sitting next to him going through some papers. All of a sudden he lets out a "Aghh!!" and covers his ears. I look at the grimmace on his face and say "Brain freeze?"
"Nope, you folded paper. I hate that sound, drives me crazy."

Interesting. I knew it bugged him but I can't say that I go around folding paper all the time and frankly I don't even think I knew I did it until he freaked.

"What do you actually feel when you hear paper being folded?"

"Like a weird tingling sensation in my ears. It just don't like the frequency is all"

Now thats very interesting! For him to use that term 'frequency' was odd at the time until I began to reflect upon it. Many of us don't like the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. Why? I had to look it up, here is what I found...

In these days when so many scientists are panting after research grants from Star Wars, Andy, it's good to know there are still a few people around who know what's really important. People like Lynn Halpern, Randy Blake, and Jim Hillenbrand of Northwestern University, for example. These daring pioneers of science recently conducted an investigation into the "psychoacoustics of a chilling sound"--in laymen's terms, why the sound of fingernails scraping a chalkboard is so godawful annoying. What's more, according to their scientific paper on the subject, the work was "supported" by the National Science Foundation. Cecil immediately jumped to the conclusion that not only were Halpern et al studying blackboard scraping, they had gotten the government to pay for it, which would put them in the running for research scam of the year. Unfortunately, further inquiry reveals that this was not exactly what happened. The National Science Foundation grant actually paid for some equipment Blake was using for more, ahem, "serious" research, which he was then able to put to disreputable ends. This does not make as good a story, I suppose, but it shows spunk all the same. Good work, gang.

In the aforementioned scientific paper (which appeared in a publication sternly entitled Perception & Psychophysics, and is not to be confused with a vulgar and sensationalized, if entertaining, article that appeared subsequently in Psychology Today), the authors note the antiquity of human curiosity on this subject. No less an authority than Aristotle acknowledged the "aversive quality" of scraping sounds. Our heroes even dug up the archaic English verb gride, which means to make godawful noises by means of scraping or cutting.

Getting down to business, Halpern and friends subjected 24 adult volunteers to various noises with a view to determining whether blackboard scraping was really as excruciating as it was made out to be. Generally speaking, they found, it was. (For purposes of reproducibility, the scraping was conducted not with fingernails but with a three-pronged garden tool, solemnly described as a "True Value Pacemaker model.") Interestingly, "rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together," the sound that results when you pry two styrofoam cups apart, came in second.

Next, by means of the magic of high tech, the researchers filtered out the most high-pitched portion of the scraping sound. To their great surprise, what remained was as unpleasant as ever. However, when they filtered out just the lower frequencies (particularly 3.0 to 6.0 kilohertz, for you weens), they found that what was left was relatively bearable--"quaint" or "tinkly," in Blake's description. In other words, it was the low-to-middle frequencies, not the high ones, that really set people's nerves on edge.

So much for science; now for the woolgathering. Knowing that the preceding research by itself would not get them on many talk shows, Halpern and her associates set about considering just why, in the philosophical, Big Picture sense, humankind was so susceptible to scraping noises. (Actually, Blake says, they did not do this to get on talk shows. They hate talk shows. Sure.) Guessing that the whole thing may have had something to do with our monkey ancestors--looked at in the proper light, just about everything has something to do with our monkey ancestors--the researchers compared the waveforms of the scraping noise with those of the warning cries of macaque monkeys. The two sounds, they decided, closely resembled one another. Ergo, Blake writes in Psychology Today, "we speculate that our spine-tingling aversion to sounds like fingernails scraped over a surface may be a vestigial reflex" inherited from our primate forebears.

Well, maybe. But by a similar application of logic, it seems to me, we might just as plausibly conclude that the reason our hair is brown (most people, anyway) is that it enabled our monkey ancestors to hide amongst the coconuts. But hey, I didn't get a research grant.

[M.D. Holloway]

and more interestingly....

Giving a closer listen to a sound most of us try to avoid – fingernails scraping on a chalkboard – has won Vanderbilt psychologist Randolph Blake an unusual and coveted award, the Ig Nobel Prize.

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The prizes, awarded annually by the Society for Improbable Research since 1991, are given to research that “makes people laugh and then makes them think.” The society receives thousands of nominations each year for the awards, which are covered by press around the globe.

“It came absolutely out of the blue,” Blake said of learning he was a 2006 winner. “I was flabbergasted that it got nominated and was awarded this prize.”

The award ceremony – which was attended by over 1,200 people and included someone scraping their fingernails on a chalkboard on the stage - took place Oct. 5 at Harvard University. Actual Nobel Laureates were on hand to distribute the prizes.

Blake’s award was given for research he published with colleagues D. Lynn Halpern and James Hillenbrand in the journal Perception & Psychophysics in 1986. The study examined why nearly everyone cringes at the sound or even thought of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard.

“We asked the very simple question, what is the nature of the acoustic signal associated with scraping your fingernails over a chalkboard, which is almost universally aversive?” he said.

Blake and his colleagues recorded the sound of a three-pronged garden tool scraping over a chalkboard and then analyzed the various frequencies present in the sound. Going on the theory that the high-pitched components of the sound produced the chilling quality, they produced various versions of the sound that were missing the high, middle and low frequencies. They then played these sounds for volunteers who rated them on how much they disliked each.

“To our surprise, the removal of the high frequencies didn’t reduce the aversive qualities of the sound, but removing the middle frequencies of the sound did,” he said.

Intrigued by this finding, Blake set about examining the sound waves associated with other vocalizations, including primate distress calls.

“It turns out the sound waves associated with primate warning cries, particularly chimpanzee warning cries, are remarkably similar in appearance to the aversive, middle frequency sound waves produced by fingernails on a chalkboard,” he said. “When you hear those cries, they are eerily similar to fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Our speculation was that the reason the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard have an almost universal aversive quality is that it triggers in us an unconscious, automatic reflex that we’re hearing a warning cry.”

Blake is Centennial Professor of Psychology and an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience and is a founding member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center. Blake was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Oct. 7.

[stomachmonkey]

Have a good friend and former coworker, same thing. It's not the actual folding, it's when you use your fingers or nails to crease it.

Was always fun in large meetings, get bored, get Christina's attention, pick up a piece of paper, watch the panic come across her face, slowly start to fold the paper, beads of sweat would start forming on her forehead while her eyes would be pleading , Noooooooooooooooooo!

For me it's a knife scraping a plate or teeth scraping a fork.

Makes me insane.

[GH85Carrera]

When I was a kid that drove me nuts. I would get a unpleasant sensation in my mouth when I heard someone crease paper. I hated it. I knew I had to keep that a secret from my brother or he would use it to torture me.

I was horrible when I had to fold a piece of paper I would bend it over and just smash it and never run my finger down the crease.

I don't remember when that sound just did not bother me anymore. I was real happy to outgrow that.

Fingernails on the blackboard never bothered me. I could make the chalk squeak when the teacher made me write on the blackboard. Half the kids and the teacher would flop around in horror. That teacher finally gave up on making me write on the black-board.

[cstreit]

My son would freak out to the sound of tape being pulled off the roll when he was 2.

[Laneco]

Squeaking styrofoam, like the sound when you put the lid back on a styrofoam cooler, is completely hideous to me. At least 10x worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. My "thing" with styrofoam extends to food service products. If the food is served in styrofoam (or hot drink) I can't touch it, it makes me gag. If I remove it from the container in put it on a plate or napkin, I'm mildly disgusted that it touched the styrofoam, but the gag reflex disappears.

I also hate the sensation of tearing cotton, like when you tear a cotton ball in half. It sends shivers up my spine. Nothing like the styrofoam, but if I have to pull cotton apart, it is somewhat disagreeable. This is a touch sensation trigger, not a sound or visual like styrofoam.

angela

[HardDrive]

We all have differing harmonics.

[speeder]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

For me it's a knife scraping a plate or teeth scraping a fork.

Makes me insane.

Yep.

[imcarthur]

The article noted that the worst (most sensitive) region is 3000 - 6000 Hz. True dat. We used to have a tweeter that had a material-induced resonance at ~3200 Hz + 2dB. Many listeners perceived it as bright even though it is actually a midrange bump. Most industrial hearing loss also hits this region.

Ian

[speeder]

Originally Posted by Laneco

Squeaking styrofoam, like the sound when you put the lid back on a styrofoam cooler, is completely hideous to me. At least 10x worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. My "thing" with styrofoam extends to food service products. If the food is served in styrofoam (or hot drink) I can't touch it, it makes me gag. If I remove it from the container in put it on a plate or napkin, I'm mildly disgusted that it touched the styrofoam, but the gag reflex disappears.

I also hate the sensation of tearing cotton, like when you tear a cotton ball in half. It sends shivers up my spine. Nothing like the styrofoam, but if I have to pull cotton apart, it is somewhat disagreeable. This is a touch sensation trigger, not a sound or visual like styrofoam.

angela

Double yep. (On the styrofoam). Makes my skin crawl. I have sensitive ears and a bit of tinnitus from prior ear injuries, so loud clapping or sharp sounds really hurt as well. It's a drag, have to wear ear plugs a lot.

[Zeke]

I guess I don't have the high sensitivity, but I can't stand the rattling of paper bags when all else is quiet. I have more than a little tinnitus, but I can hear a pin drop when all else is quiet. So under that circumstance, I can be more sensitive.

Denis, I understand a bit more about how griding metal may affect you. It is a nasty sound without a lot of ear protection. In close proximity it may sound a lot louder than it actually is.

As HD said, we all have different harmonics. Let me add that we all have different thresholds as well.

[M.D. Holloway]

The shrill of my Wife's yell sends waves of nausea through me - I think it has more to do with experience than harmonics!

[cstreit]

I didn't realize we had so many weirdo's here.

[daepp]

I worked with a woman who had the exact some problem. If you creased paper with your fingernails it absolutely drove her crazy!

[tabs]

Children have more frequency accuity than adults..

There is only one sound that makes me want to run and hide and that is the sound...WORK...

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by tabs

Children have more frequency accuity than adults..

There is only one sound that makes me want to run and hide and that is the sound...WORK...

We are pretty sure it is not the sound of a keyboard.

[Head416]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Have a good friend and former coworker, same thing. It's not the actual folding, it's when you use your fingers or nails to crease it.

I do this frequently with papers I have... actually, EVERY time I fold something. A guy at my work can't stand it just like the OP's son.

This guy makes my life miserable on a regular basis by dumping his responsibilities on everybody else, so I fold paper around him as often as possible. Some might say "petty"... I say it's a good release.

[s_morrison57]

My 11 year old practicing the trumpet does it for me, I just go out to the garage and watch tv when he starts up

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by tabs

There is only one sound that makes me want to run and hide and that is the sound...WORK...

I know what you mean Tabs. I tried it once and found it wasn't really for me.

[Jess]

My ex-wife's voice on the phone; usually about the second of each month.