I don't think we have got past the stumbling block that we can't demonstrate scientifically whether people lose their audio discerning abilities when they know they are taking part in an experiment. Obviously, setting up an experiment to test this is probably impossible. Pointing to the fact that science is used to test humans in all sorts of fields that involve asking "How do you feel?" doesn't alter that fact - their results may be similarly dubious.
I don't think so. Now if you are talking about challenges to someone's audiophile manhood, then stress is involved.
When in college I signed up for some experiments given by grad students mostly in the psych dept. Didn't know what they were about ahead of time, never told of the results afterward. These were sensory tests. Some of vision, some of touch, some of manual dexterity and some of listening or at least language recognition ability.
I would do my best, but not uptight about it. Was getting a few bucks for an hour or half hour. For instance one was listening to words spoken in the midst of noise. The loudness of the words varied noise didn't. I was supposed to write what they were. At some point they had hidden a tube to direct a blast of air into your eyes. Enough to slightly startle you. And yet the words kept coming. In this case the words were things like spider, snake, scorpion, bee and some others I am not remembering after so many years. The test was being filmed.
I had nothing on the line based upon doing well or not doing well on the test. Would never be told how I did. Don't know if it was a test of discernment of dangerous critters. A test of if you heard dangerous words better than others (some of the words I simply couldn't make out), a test of whether the next few words are heard less well or perhaps from adrenaline heard more precisely after an unexpected blast of air to your eyes or what it might have been or if the film was looking at your facial or pupil response.
So do people lose their audio discernment during tests? I might buy they have it slightly diminished via stress. Lose it, no that would be some incredible news. Be able to hear beyond all levels immeasurably small effects often claimed, and yet lose that completely when asked to test it? Again that is really bending over backwards to think that is happening.
The other thing to think about his how audiophile claimed hearing ability fits in with all other information. Our regular tests of hearing ability in most ways matches up very well with physical constraints of sound, with physical structure of the hearing mechanism, and so on and so forth. Things that could be or have been determined without the listening tests you have in mind.
There is plenty of literature investigating the frequency hearing range of mammals. It fits very well with the physical size of the basilar membrane. Where the human BM fits indicates something a bit beyond 15 khz. Regular testing, of the kind that you think might cause a loss of discernment, indicate the same thing. Firing impulses into the ear canal and recording what comes back reflexively from the hearing structure indicate about the same thing. What is known about firing along the auditory nerve with various frequency stimulus indicates about the same thing. Sighted audiophile anecdotal testimony indicates we need far, far more than this range.
If you look at the ear drum, and the nerve activity at quiet sound levels, our hearing threshold in young healthy adults drops down to right above the point at which we would hear brownian noise of the air molecules if it were just a bit more sensitive with our physical structure. Looks readily apparent why that would be the lower limit. The ability to hear timing between ears and level differences fits in with the physical size of our heads and spacing of our hears. And these limits are in agreement with a conventional unsighted testing of those abilities. Yet audiophiles claim to be effected by presence or absence of noise levels far below what can even be transmitted via the air when mixed with complex music signals. And in direct opposition to masking abilities of noise that also when tested are in line with what you would expect of the ears physical functioning.
Now we know lots, but probably a small minority percentage about processing or pattern matching done with the signals sent to our brain from our ears. You can't process out perception at levels and frequencies etc that simply are beyond or below what the hearing mechanisms themselves are capable of working with. The brain's input of information is limited by that. The kind of discernment claimed yet to go missing when testing audiophiles would be so far beyond many of the physically real possibilities they should be scoffed at immediately.
, your experiment is not designed to get scientific data but rather show the fragility of conclusions audiophiles have reached over such things. It is valuable in that regard but it is obviously not how science is done.
