Clapping is a little‐studied human activity that may be viewed either as a form of communicative group behavior (applause) or as an individual sound‐generating activity involving two ‘‘articulators’’—the hands. The latter aspect was explored in this pilot study by means of acoustical analyses and perceptual experiments. Principal components analysis of 20 subjects’ average clap spectra yielded several dimensions of interindividual variation that were related to observed hand configuration. This relationship emerged even more clearly in a similar analysis of a single clapper’s deliberately varied productions. In perception experiments, subjects proved sensitive to spectral properties of claps: For a single clapper, at least, listeners were able to judge hand configuration with good accuracy. Besides providing some general information on individual variations in clapping, the present results support the general hypothesis that sound emanating from a natural source informs listeners about the changing states of the source mechanism.
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April 1987
April 01 1987
The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study
Bruno H. Repp
Bruno H. Repp
Haskins Laboratories, 270 Crown Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511‐6695
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, 1100–1109 (1987)
Article history
Received:
September 01 1986
Accepted:
November 05 1986
Connected Content
A correction has been published:
Erratum: ‘‘The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study’’ [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, 1100–1109 (1987)]
Citation
Bruno H. Repp; The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 April 1987; 81 (4): 1100–1109. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.394630
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