Also referred to as audio illusion. Both terms are used to denote a paradoxical * auditory illusion created with the aid of musical sounds. The British-American cognitive psychologist Diana Deutsch designed and published many musical illusions. An example is the octave illusion, also referred to as Deutsch's illusion. This illusion can be evoked by repeatedly presenting a dichotic pair of tones, spaced an octave apart, to the left and right ear in alternation, so that when the relatively high tone is perceived by the right ear, the relatively low one is perceived by the left ear, and vice versa. This procedure typically results in the illusion of a single low tone perceived by one ear, alternating with a single high tone perceived by the other ear. Other examples of musical illusions developed by Deutsch are the scale illusion, chromatic illusion, glissando illusion, cambiata illusion, and tritone paradox.
References
Deutsch, D. (1975). Musical illusions. Scientific American, 233, 94-102.
Deutsch, D., ed. (1999). The psychology ofmusic. Second edition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.