In an experiment done in 2001, people were told to listen to featureless random noise through a set of headphones, and were told that the song “White Christmas” might occasionally be played very quietly through the noise. They had to press a button if they were sure they’d heard the song. About a third of the subjects pressed the button at least once, but in fact the song was never played. The usual interpretation of the experiment is that the subjects in the experiment imagined the tune they were supposed to listen for, and sometimes mistook their own auditory image for a genuine playing of
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