Why is the possibility of Lechmere interrupting the ripper so often discarded?

[Abby Normal]

Well, Cross/Lechmere only has a chance of detecting the killer if the killer leaves upon Cross/Lechmere's arrival. If the killer fled before that, then there's no chance for Cross/Lechmere to see/hear anything.

Also, having done a couple simulations for Buck's Row, there aren't many opportunities for Paul to see Cross/Lechmere prior to Paul turning into Buck's Row. We do know that Cross/Lechmere notices what he thinks might be a tarpaulin, and decides to check it out. So C/L could have slowed down at that point to better try and work out what he's looking at, and we know of course that he stops in the middle of the street. That means, Paul will be closing the distance between them during that period (not long, probably 5-10 seconds type thing), so for much of the time Paul is more than 40 yards distant. We also have no idea how accurate that 40 yards is, and when C/L says when he noticed Paul that Paul was 40 yards behind him maybe he was 50, or 60 yards, etc, he's estimating a distance from memory, not measuring one with a tape measure. And if C/L slowed and paused, that means Paul was generally even further. And the further apart Paul and C/L are for the bulk of the journey, the less and less probable it becomes that either noticed the other.

Basically, we have too little solid information to know whether or not either should have noticed the other. We have nothing recorded that says they did, and nothing recorded that says they didn't (we have stories that start at a particular point, but no clear statement that both were unaware of the other prior to that starting point of the story they tell). We have possible scenarios of their journeys that suggest there could be a good possibility they should have noticed each other (particularly Paul noting C/L), but we also have possible scenarios that explain why they didn't (without invoking guilt of course). Like everything JtR, we have just enough information to use as building blocks, and more than enough creativity to fill in the blanks. But our building blocks (evidence) are too few to constrain our final construction (story) to a similar basic shape, resulting in stories that appear to have almost nothing in common because the bulk of the completed stories are shaped by the flexibility of creativity and not by the restricting constraints of solid evidence.

- Jeff

a good and fair post. points taken.

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

While Paul starts his testimony at the point he sees Cross/Lechmere standing in the middle of the street, he doesn't actually say that was the first point at which he noticed Cross/Lechmere at all. It's just the point at which his encounter with Cross/Lechmere begins. By that I mean, that's when he starts to take particular notice, and he gets worried about what Cross/Lechmere's intentions were, it's the start of his eventual meeting with Cross/Lechmere that he's testifying to. We see in his later testimony that he tries to avoid Cross/Lechmere, who has to tap him on the shoulder to get him to come look at Polly, etc, so we know he's cautious about this unknown fellow standing in the street. And that increase in caution alerts him to his surroundings, attending to them more, and his memory for the event would improve from that point on (although becoming too aroused/alert/frightened can have detrimental effects on memory, but he doesn't appear that frightened just cautious).

It is entirely possible, though unprovable, that during his police interview when he gave his statement that it came out that he had seen Cross/Lechmere walking ahead of him earlier. That could be why the police appear to have no interest in Cross/Lechmere as a suspect because he was cleared by Paul's police statement very early on.

Sadly, there's no way for us to know if that were the case and clearly it may not have been so I'm not pushing it as if it is a fact. Rather, it's just one of the infinite number of possibilities that "could be true", and what we lack is evidence to start narrowing down those possibilities on that point. While something like that might explain why the police appear little interested in Cross/Lechmere as a suspect, one can also argue that apparent lack of interest is only because the records we have are only a fraction of what the police did and/or were interested in. So maybe they were interested in him, investigated him, lost interest because it lead nowhere and he was cleared somehow other than by Paul seeing him ahead earlier in his walk. Others would argue the police never investigated Cross/Lechmere but just took him at his word and made an error by overlooking him as a result. Our lack of access to the details of the police investigations hinder us because we only have summary reports, and summary reports often don't go into the details of what didn't pan out, and also don't summarize things they have not done.

- Jeff

its all well and good to speculate on what paul may have said, eventhough there is no evidence he ever said he heard or saw lech ahead of him --but what was that word you used when others were also speculating about lechs and pauls actions, although it was to his guilt? I beleive the word you used was fantasy.

therefore by your own standards and actual words, your above post is fantasy. dosnt feel good does it jeff?

[Harry D]

he didnt hear or see any one leaving the scene, which again places him as the only one there around her time of death. If guilty I have no Idea why he didnt lie and say he did, who knows?

Indeed, who knows? It's a valid question for anyone presupposing Lechmere's guilt.

only lech lurking about when he got there.

Poor choice of words. He wasn't "lurking" anywhere, he was bang in the middle of the street in full view of Paul.

[JeffHamm]

seems to me the way the situation was described, lech should have heard or seen the killer leaving the scene, or paul should have heard or seen lech walking in front of him.

If Paul had, it would be game over for me with lech as a suspect. I think its an important and relevant point.

Well, Cross/Lechmere only has a chance of detecting the killer if the killer leaves upon Cross/Lechmere's arrival. If the killer fled before that, then there's no chance for Cross/Lechmere to see/hear anything.

Also, having done a couple simulations for Buck's Row, there aren't many opportunities for Paul to see Cross/Lechmere prior to Paul turning into Buck's Row. We do know that Cross/Lechmere notices what he thinks might be a tarpaulin, and decides to check it out. So C/L could have slowed down at that point to better try and work out what he's looking at, and we know of course that he stops in the middle of the street. That means, Paul will be closing the distance between them during that period (not long, probably 5-10 seconds type thing), so for much of the time Paul is more than 40 yards distant. We also have no idea how accurate that 40 yards is, and when C/L says when he noticed Paul that Paul was 40 yards behind him maybe he was 50, or 60 yards, etc, he's estimating a distance from memory, not measuring one with a tape measure. And if C/L slowed and paused, that means Paul was generally even further. And the further apart Paul and C/L are for the bulk of the journey, the less and less probable it becomes that either noticed the other.

Basically, we have too little solid information to know whether or not either should have noticed the other. We have nothing recorded that says they did, and nothing recorded that says they didn't (we have stories that start at a particular point, but no clear statement that both were unaware of the other prior to that starting point of the story they tell). We have possible scenarios of their journeys that suggest there could be a good possibility they should have noticed each other (particularly Paul noting C/L), but we also have possible scenarios that explain why they didn't (without invoking guilt of course). Like everything JtR, we have just enough information to use as building blocks, and more than enough creativity to fill in the blanks. But our building blocks (evidence) are too few to constrain our final construction (story) to a similar basic shape, resulting in stories that appear to have almost nothing in common because the bulk of the completed stories are shaped by the flexibility of creativity and not by the restricting constraints of solid evidence.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

he didnt hear or see any one leaving the scene, which again places him as the only one there around her time of death. If guilty I have no Idea why he didnt lie and say he did, who knows?
fact is as far as we know-hes the only one there.

and paul didnt see or hear anyone ahead of him as he approached, nor anyone fleeing, or leaving the scene. only lech lurking about when he got there.

Hi Abby,

While Paul starts his testimony at the point he sees Cross/Lechmere standing in the middle of the street, he doesn't actually say that was the first point at which he noticed Cross/Lechmere at all. It's just the point at which his encounter with Cross/Lechmere begins. By that I mean, that's when he starts to take particular notice, and he gets worried about what Cross/Lechmere's intentions were, it's the start of his eventual meeting with Cross/Lechmere that he's testifying to. We see in his later testimony that he tries to avoid Cross/Lechmere, who has to tap him on the shoulder to get him to come look at Polly, etc, so we know he's cautious about this unknown fellow standing in the street. And that increase in caution alerts him to his surroundings, attending to them more, and his memory for the event would improve from that point on (although becoming too aroused/alert/frightened can have detrimental effects on memory, but he doesn't appear that frightened just cautious).

It is entirely possible, though unprovable, that during his police interview when he gave his statement that it came out that he had seen Cross/Lechmere walking ahead of him earlier. That could be why the police appear to have no interest in Cross/Lechmere as a suspect because he was cleared by Paul's police statement very early on.

Sadly, there's no way for us to know if that were the case and clearly it may not have been so I'm not pushing it as if it is a fact. Rather, it's just one of the infinite number of possibilities that "could be true", and what we lack is evidence to start narrowing down those possibilities on that point. While something like that might explain why the police appear little interested in Cross/Lechmere as a suspect, one can also argue that apparent lack of interest is only because the records we have are only a fraction of what the police did and/or were interested in. So maybe they were interested in him, investigated him, lost interest because it lead nowhere and he was cleared somehow other than by Paul seeing him ahead earlier in his walk. Others would argue the police never investigated Cross/Lechmere but just took him at his word and made an error by overlooking him as a result. Our lack of access to the details of the police investigations hinder us because we only have summary reports, and summary reports often don't go into the details of what didn't pan out, and also don't summarize things they have not done.

- Jeff

[Abby Normal]

Why would Lechmere state that he should've heard someone else on the scene, if he was guilty? Even if he didn't want to commit, he could've still left the possibility open. Seems a peculiar thing for a killer to come out with, when he's aware that he's the only one at the scene of the crime.

he didnt hear or see any one leaving the scene, which again places him as the only one there around her time of death. If guilty I have no Idea why he didnt lie and say he did, who knows?
fact is as far as we know-hes the only one there.

and paul didnt see or hear anyone ahead of him as he approached, nor anyone fleeing, or leaving the scene. only lech lurking about when he got there.

[Harry D]

seems to me the way the situation was described, lech should have heard or seen the killer leaving the scene, or paul should have heard or seen lech walking in front of him.

If Paul had, it would be game over for me with lech as a suspect. I think its an important and relevant point.

Why would Lechmere state that he should've heard someone else on the scene, if he was guilty? Even if he didn't want to commit, he could've still left the possibility open. Seems a peculiar thing for a killer to come out with, when he's aware that he's the only one at the scene of the crime.

[Abby Normal]

seems to me the way the situation was described, lech should have heard or seen the killer leaving the scene, or paul should have heard or seen lech walking in front of him.

If Paul had, it would be game over for me with lech as a suspect. I think its an important and relevant point.

[FISHY1118]

Absolute nonsense, this thread should be shut down .

[Aethelwulf]

Couldn't make time until now. I'll respond to a few of your points.
I'm pretty much in the same boat: believe what you want.

You have a habit of attempting to generalize from matters that barely touch upon the issue of hearing someone's footsteps.
Your idea of subconsciousness in the Amusic example are simply neurons in the auditory cortex firing strongly due to a mismatch (sudden tonal change). Neuroscientists call this an N1 response. Most people's frontal lobe is then able to process the difference and categorize the new sound as being distinct. This is called deviance detection. Amusical people's processing centers do not have this capability: they sense a change but can not articulate what exactly it is.

Now, if your example extends to some peoples inability to differentiate the sudden incursion of footsteps from their own....unlike the amusic, it would be of some interest. So, I reject completely your idea about the subconscious register of footsteps (with the frontal lobe incapable of differentiating between footsteps), followed by habituation; there is nothing in the literature that suggests this to be possible, and frankly it sounds like something you just made up:
and yet you claim that i engage in hand waiving?

If Lech were schizophrenic or autistic, novel stimuli like new footsteps would not initiate any increased neural response in relation to repetitive predictive sounds: maybe you should go there. The idea of noise cancellation would fit such individuals.

Getting back to the actual topic, Lechmere/Paul not hearing footsteps, and then Lech suddenly hearing footsteps:
Lech was not only moving towards Polly Nichol's body (so much for the cancellation theory), but he had the additional mental burden of
trying to make visual sense of what he was moving towards. The brain is not good at processing visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously
(if you desire, i can show you a study), and Lech's frontal lobe at that moment would most probably give preference to what he was seeing.
So, it is very strange that a sound he had ignored for a minute finally reached his consciousness at this particular moment. I doubt the extra 10 yards made the sound pass a sort of intensity thresh hold.

BTW, the study I referred to would also disagree with your idea of JtR simultaneously performing his ritual and still being well poised to listen for sounds.

If Lech was steadily marching in front of Paul by 50 yards down Bath street & then down Buck's row, he would have heard Paul, or Paul would have heard him. Buck's row was perfect for amplifying the sounds of footsteps: the street was narrow, it was aligned with brick walls with no alcoves, and the pavement appears to have made from granite setts - a type of street comparable to cobblestone. Almost all Whitechapel streets in the late 19th century were composed in such a manner. Furthermore, boots with rubber souls were a few years away, and the laboring poor who were thrifty (most needed to be) seemed to have the tendency of driving copper shoe nails around the edge of their boot soles to maintain the shoe's longevity. If you want to insist that Lech was fearless and paid little heed to his environment, Paul was not so inclined.

One final thing, this last bit of yours is basically incoherent: its part pseudoscience, part projection ( the my ignoring key points part)

"Same response, but to different stimuli - you're just ignoring the fact that what set Cross/Lechmere into "what's all this then" mode was his seeing Polly, and it was then he becomes aware of the weak signals around him, including Paul's approach.

There's plenty of actual research on what we perceive behind what I've mentioned that yes, I believe what I said as I hope everyone here does, even if I disagree with them, so believe what you want."

You are just making stuff up and boldly assert that studies support your contentions and point to signal theory (hand waiving gesture), or talk about the laws of physics (hand waiving gesture), or bang a few keys about salience, or that there is plenty of actual research (a final hand waiving gesture):

Point me to just one study on the "whats this all then" mode suddenly permitting the detection of weak auditory signals, or your invention about stimuli (footsteps) registering on the unconscious level and then becoming habituated.

You are making this stuff up and then boldly proclaiming that it is backed by science. Well, show me! I don't require plenty of research, just one article.

I am not expecting anything of the kind, nor do i expect you to explain why being visually stimulated (the figure on the ground) somehow kicks in an enhanced auditory processing.

There is no sensible argument as to why Lech suddenly stopped after alleging to have finally heard a sound that proceeded him for more than a minute, without concluding that there is a very strong likelihood that he is lying.

And that Paul's failure to identify footsteps just ahead is because Lech was already next to the body.

The fact that you've got down to this level of minutiae about sound and who heard what/when in Bucks Row highlights the fact that there isn't any meaningful sinister evidence to discuss in the context of Lechmere. As for the devil being in the detail, in this case it's sounds much more like desperation is in the detail.

[JeffHamm]

Couldn't make time until now. I'll respond to a few of your points.
I'm pretty much in the same boat: believe what you want.

You have a habit of attempting to generalize from matters that barely touch upon the issue of hearing someone's footsteps.
Your idea of subconsciousness in the Amusic example are simply neurons in the auditory cortex firing strongly due to a mismatch (sudden tonal change). Neuroscientists call this an N1 response. Most people's frontal lobe is then able to process the difference and categorize the new sound as being distinct. This is called deviance detection. Amusical people's processing centers do not have this capability: they sense a change but can not articulate what exactly it is.

Amusics sense the change if you use the specific meaning of that as used in the literature, which is that their sensory organs, and brain, responds to it (as the fMRI study shows). What is important, though is that they do not perceive it - they are not aware of the change; it's not just they can't articulate it, they aren't conscious of it in order to articulate it. We're talking about whether or not Cross/Lechmere perceived Paul's footsteps, not whether or not his brain sensed it. They're not the same thing.

And detecting a mismatch isn't the N1, that's the first large negative response in an auditory evoked potential. You get an N1 to pretty much any discrete auditory signal. Mismatches generally evoke either a P300 or an MMN (Mismatch Negativity) depending upon the specific experimental protocol. I do EEG research, and have done some auditory studies, so I'm aware of these things.

Now, if your example extends to some peoples inability to differentiate the sudden incursion of footsteps from their own....unlike the amusic, it would be of some interest.

Paul didn't "suddenly" end up in Buck's Row, he had been walking some distance behind Cross/Lechmere for some time. His footsteps, if they were even audible, were not a new signal in Cross/Lechmere's environment. You seem to be thinking that Paul stepped out from a doorway in Buck's Row, and suddenly introduced a new sound. That's not the case.

So, I reject completely your idea about the subconscious register of footsteps (with the frontal lobe incapable of differentiating between footsteps), followed by habituation; there is nothing in the literature that suggests this to be possible, and frankly it sounds like something you just made up:
and yet you claim that i engage in hand waiving?

I never said anything about subconsciousness, that's something you've made up. I said he may not have been concious of his footsteps, but I am not claiming he was subconciously processing them. I'm just saying he probably wasn't aware of them. And you're the one who brought in habituation of regular sounds, not me.

What I've been saying is that Cross/Lechmere's own footfalls would be louder, and therefore likely to mask the fait signal of distant footfalls. There has been research since the 1800s on our ability to detect sensory signals, and weak signals in a noisy environment are very hard to detect. Moreover, they are even harder to detect if we are not actively attending to the location from which they originate, and given the situation, Cross/Lechmere is going to be attending in front of himself, not behind, and we see that was the case in that he spots Polly ahead of him, on the other side of the road, at some distance. He's attending forward, not backwards, and therefore Paul's footsteps suffer yet another penelty with regards to their detectability. Again, there are decades of research on the influence of where we attend on our ability to detect signals. But you're ignoring it.

If Lech were schizophrenic or autistic, novel stimuli like new footsteps would not initiate any increased neural response in relation to repetitive predictive sounds: maybe you should go there. The idea of noise cancellation would fit such individuals.

I never called anything "noise cancelation", and that seems like an inappropriate rephrasing of "masking". Masking isn't "noise cancelation", rather it's the fact that stimulation can interfere with other stimulation. A trivial example is a flash bulb, which masks seeing things for a brief period afterwards (although that's primarily due to bleaching of the cones, so right at the sensory level). But seriously, think of hearing someone whisper. It's easy in a quiet room, hard at a concert. Louder sounds mask weaker sounds.

Getting back to the actual topic, Lechmere/Paul not hearing footsteps, and then Lech suddenly hearing footsteps:
Lech was not only moving towards Polly Nichol's body (so much for the cancellation theory),

That's your interpretation. To me, it reads like he walks towards what he thinks is a tarpaulin, realises it's a woman, and stops to assess the situation. And it is when he stops, that he hears Paul approaching. Two things have happened that increase the likelihood of him hearing Paul at that point. First, he's stopped moving himself, and second he's now likely to be scanning the area in all directions as he assesses the situation.

but he had the additional mental burden of
trying to make visual sense of what he was moving towards. The brain is not good at processing visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously
(if you desire, i can show you a study),

not necessary

and Lech's frontal lobe at that moment would most probably give preference to what he was seeing.

Cross/Lechmere seems like seeing Polly disturbed him, so he is likely to scan his entire area for any signal of potential danger at this point, that would include listening for sounds. And he appears to have heard some too, go figure.

So, it is very strange that a sound he had ignored for a minute finally reached his consciousness at this particular moment. I doubt the extra 10 yards made the sound pass a sort of intensity thresh hold.

No, it's not very strange, it's exactly what one would expect actually. You're just choosing to spin it differently and try and make it appear odd. It's not, it's typical.

BTW, the study I referred to would also disagree with your idea of JtR simultaneously performing his ritual and still being well poised to listen for sounds.

I'm sure you think so. But as you started off by indicating the studies I've mentioned about auditory signals that can be registered by the brain and yet not result in the person perceiving them as being me showing "a habit of attempting to generalize from matters that barely touch upon the issue of hearing someone's footsteps", I rather suspect your study isn't about a serial killer in the midst of murdering someone and determining how well they hear footsteps of someone wearing Victorian era footwear.

If Lech was steadily marching in front of Paul by 50 yards down Bath street & then down Buck's row, he would have heard Paul, or Paul would have heard him.

Which then means that by the time Cross/Lechmere gets to Buck's Row, Paul's footsteps are just part of the environment and he has no need to attend to them for some time now, and so very easily could have stopped being aware of them by the time he finds Polly, only rehearing them when he becomes aware there's a woman in front of him on the street, and he stops moving and starts wondering what is around him.

Buck's row was perfect for amplifying the sounds of footsteps: the street was narrow, it was aligned with brick walls with no alcoves, and the pavement appears to have made from granite setts - a type of street comparable to cobblestone. Almost all Whitechapel streets in the late 19th century were composed in such a manner. Furthermore, boots with rubber souls were a few years away, and the laboring poor who were thrifty (most needed to be) seemed to have the tendency of driving copper shoe nails around the edge of their boot soles to maintain the shoe's longevity. If you want to insist that Lech was fearless and paid little heed to his environment, Paul was not so inclined.

You're overstating what I said. I said Cross/Lechmere would be used to the environment, and given he's walked to work for over a month now, he's familiar with the environment and so isn't going to be in a state of high alert every morning. Moreover, his concern will be about the unknown ahead of him, not the known behind him (he's been there done that). I have quite clearly said his attention will be ahead of him, and you're presenting it as if I said he would be paying "little heed to his environment", which is unlike my description.

One final thing, this last bit of yours is basically incoherent: its part pseudoscience, part projection ( the my ignoring key points part)

"Same response, but to different stimuli - you're just ignoring the fact that what set Cross/Lechmere into "what's all this then" mode was his seeing Polly, and it was then he becomes aware of the weak signals around him, including Paul's approach.

There's plenty of actual research on what we perceive behind what I've mentioned that yes, I believe what I said as I hope everyone here does, even if I disagree with them, so believe what you want."

You are just making stuff up and boldly assert that studies support your contentions and point to signal theory (hand waiving gesture), or talk about the laws of physics (hand waiving gesture), or bang a few keys about salience, or that there is plenty of actual research (a final hand waiving gesture):

Point me to just one study on the "whats this all then" mode suddenly permitting the detection of weak auditory signals, or your invention about stimuli (footsteps) registering on the unconscious level and then becoming habituated.

You are making this stuff up and then boldly proclaiming that it is backed by science. Well, show me! I don't require plenty of research, just one article.

No, I'm not making things up, but go ahead and resort to the hand over the ears defence. The "what's all this then" is just a way of saying he's become alerted to a situation and so his attention is now cued to the environment and he scans it for information. Attention improves our ability to detect signals (years of studies on that, empirical work by Broadbent in the 1950s is generally where people start looking, but William James theorized about attention's influence back in the 1800s.) You keep resorting to "the unconscious", in some Freudian type usage, while I only talk about things being consciously aware to us (perceived) or not (not perceived, so we're not aware of them). We habituate to constant stimulation all the time. Your afterimage presentation is an example of just that, our red cones habituate to the repetitive presentation of the bird, so when you look at a white surface, which normally activates the red, green, and blue cones, the red don't fire well. Also, further along in the brain, there are colour opponent cells, which respond in opposite directions to red or green input, and white normally balances them, but due to the habituated (reduced) red cone activity, these cells tilt in favour of green (which is why we tend to see green as the after image colour of red).

I am not expecting anything of the kind, nor do i expect you to explain why being visually stimulated (the figure on the ground) somehow kicks in an enhanced auditory processing.

What kicks in one's alert system is being alerted to change, and being unsure of one's environment. Finding Polly would have done that for Cross/Lechmere. It's not the visual stimulation (which implies anything visual would have done the same thing), but the fact he's now in an unusal situation, and one he doesn't fully comprehend, which could be dangerous. So his attention to his environment kicks in stronger, and he looks, and listens, for signs of activity, and lo and behold he hears Paul.

There is no sensible argument as to why Lech suddenly stopped after alleging to have finally heard a sound that proceeded him for more than a minute, without concluding that there is a very strong likelihood that he is lying.

??? Cross/Lechmere finds a woman laying on the street when he expected to find a piece of tarpaulin. And you don't think that's reason for him to stop and take note of his environment, despite reminding me he's in a dangerous place?

And that Paul's failure to identify footsteps just ahead is because Lech was already next to the body.

We don't know when Paul became aware of Cross/Lechmere, so it's entirely possible, likely even, that Paul was aware of Cross/Lechmere before Cross/Lechmere was aware of Paul.

- Jeff

[Newbie]

Paul would have been following Cross/Lechmere for some time, so his distant footsteps would not be novel. Moreover, brain responses, while very interesting and not to be dismissed, are not the be all and end all of information. Some neural responses can get suppressed and yet, oddly, the signal might still be perceived. Conversely, we might not perceive a signal despite there being a neural response that differentiates it. For example, there are some studies with Amusics, people who cannot differentiate tones, that shows their brain can differentiate them - I've forgotten the reference though and can't pull it up as I'm at home and it's not my work. Our brain will, at some level, respond to things that do not reach our conscious awareness, and it is the latter that we're talking about. There are also weaker brain responses to expected stimulations (like self generated sounds), which still result in the stimulation being detected. We do not have the foggiest idea as to how the brain responses create awareness of things, so brain responses, while very interesting, are not actually the same as perception of the stimuli. One shouldn't conflate the two. I've been presenting research focused on what we're aware of.

Given Paul would have been behind Cross/Lechmere for some time, his footsteps, even if once noticed, would no longer be the novel stimuli you are trying to make them out to be. As such, the entire premise upon which you are building is flawed on that grounds. You're also handwaving at all of the literature on the perception of sensory signals, on masking, and on vigilance, etc, that I've mentioned. As for Paul's statement, that would be relevant if we were talking about Paul, but we're talking about Cross/Lechmere, and he makes no statement that implies he held those concerns. But of course, Paul sees someone in front of him stop, wait for him, etc, and so he becomes "hyper vigilant", just like Cross/Lechmere did when he saw a woman on the ground in front of him. Same response, but to different stimuli - you're just ignoring the fact that what set Cross/Lechmere into "what's all this then" mode was his seeing Polly, and it was then he becomes aware of the weak signals around him, including Paul's approach.

There's plenty of actual research on what we perceive behind what I've mentioned that yes, I believe what I said as I hope everyone here does, even if I disagree with them, so believe what you want.

- Jeff

Couldn't make time until now. I'll respond to a few of your points.
I'm pretty much in the same boat: believe what you want.

You have a habit of attempting to generalize from matters that barely touch upon the issue of hearing someone's footsteps.
Your idea of subconsciousness in the Amusic example are simply neurons in the auditory cortex firing strongly due to a mismatch (sudden tonal change). Neuroscientists call this an N1 response. Most people's frontal lobe is then able to process the difference and categorize the new sound as being distinct. This is called deviance detection. Amusical people's processing centers do not have this capability: they sense a change but can not articulate what exactly it is.

Now, if your example extends to some peoples inability to differentiate the sudden incursion of footsteps from their own....unlike the amusic, it would be of some interest. So, I reject completely your idea about the subconscious register of footsteps (with the frontal lobe incapable of differentiating between footsteps), followed by habituation; there is nothing in the literature that suggests this to be possible, and frankly it sounds like something you just made up:
and yet you claim that i engage in hand waiving?

If Lech were schizophrenic or autistic, novel stimuli like new footsteps would not initiate any increased neural response in relation to repetitive predictive sounds: maybe you should go there. The idea of noise cancellation would fit such individuals.

Getting back to the actual topic, Lechmere/Paul not hearing footsteps, and then Lech suddenly hearing footsteps:
Lech was not only moving towards Polly Nichol's body (so much for the cancellation theory), but he had the additional mental burden of
trying to make visual sense of what he was moving towards. The brain is not good at processing visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously
(if you desire, i can show you a study), and Lech's frontal lobe at that moment would most probably give preference to what he was seeing.
So, it is very strange that a sound he had ignored for a minute finally reached his consciousness at this particular moment. I doubt the extra 10 yards made the sound pass a sort of intensity thresh hold.

BTW, the study I referred to would also disagree with your idea of JtR simultaneously performing his ritual and still being well poised to listen for sounds.

If Lech was steadily marching in front of Paul by 50 yards down Bath street & then down Buck's row, he would have heard Paul, or Paul would have heard him. Buck's row was perfect for amplifying the sounds of footsteps: the street was narrow, it was aligned with brick walls with no alcoves, and the pavement appears to have made from granite setts - a type of street comparable to cobblestone. Almost all Whitechapel streets in the late 19th century were composed in such a manner. Furthermore, boots with rubber souls were a few years away, and the laboring poor who were thrifty (most needed to be) seemed to have the tendency of driving copper shoe nails around the edge of their boot soles to maintain the shoe's longevity. If you want to insist that Lech was fearless and paid little heed to his environment, Paul was not so inclined.

One final thing, this last bit of yours is basically incoherent: its part pseudoscience, part projection ( the my ignoring key points part)

"Same response, but to different stimuli - you're just ignoring the fact that what set Cross/Lechmere into "what's all this then" mode was his seeing Polly, and it was then he becomes aware of the weak signals around him, including Paul's approach.

There's plenty of actual research on what we perceive behind what I've mentioned that yes, I believe what I said as I hope everyone here does, even if I disagree with them, so believe what you want."

You are just making stuff up and boldly assert that studies support your contentions and point to signal theory (hand waiving gesture), or talk about the laws of physics (hand waiving gesture), or bang a few keys about salience, or that there is plenty of actual research (a final hand waiving gesture):

Point me to just one study on the "whats this all then" mode suddenly permitting the detection of weak auditory signals, or your invention about stimuli (footsteps) registering on the unconscious level and then becoming habituated.

You are making this stuff up and then boldly proclaiming that it is backed by science. Well, show me! I don't require plenty of research, just one article.

I am not expecting anything of the kind, nor do i expect you to explain why being visually stimulated (the figure on the ground) somehow kicks in an enhanced auditory processing.

There is no sensible argument as to why Lech suddenly stopped after alleging to have finally heard a sound that proceeded him for more than a minute, without concluding that there is a very strong likelihood that he is lying.

And that Paul's failure to identify footsteps just ahead is because Lech was already next to the body.

[JeffHamm]

Ah, here's one article that I alluded to above (Norman-Haignere, Albouy, Caclin, McDermott, Kanwisher, and Tillmann, 2016), where Amusics (people who have difficulty recognizing a change in pitch of a tone) can show brain responses indistinguishable from those who can.

The opening paragraph of their discussion nicely sums up their main finding:
"Our results demonstrate pitch-responsive regions in amusic individuals that are comparable in extent, selectivity, and anatomical location to those of controls. Highly significant clusters of pitch-responsive voxels were observed in amusics, overlapping the low-frequency area of lateral Heschl's gyrus as in typical listeners (Patterson et al., 2002; Penagos et al., 2004; Norman-Haignere et al., 2013; Plack et al., 2014). Pitch-responsive voxels in amusics were just as selective for pitch as those in controls, even in amusic subjects who were unable to discriminate large changes in pitch that would be obvious to a normal listener (i.e., pitch changes >1 semitone)."

Basically, extrapolating from neural response to perception is fraught with problems, and while studies examining the brain responses are important and informative they do not tell us about perception (just like perception does not tell us about brain responses). We can, of course, form a hypothesis about one based upon results from the other, but a hypothesis is not evidence, it's a speculation in need of testing.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Well, you kind of gave me a study. It does not support your contention that one's own footsteps act as masking agents; instead you employ it to render suspect the ability of people to recognize the footsteps of an unexpected stranger walking behind them, either by not noticing them or confusing their footsteps with one's own.
Do you actually believe this?

There have been actual studies conducted towards determining what is going on in the synaptic transmission of signals that make us typically ignore our own footsteps and mark that of another; it is not fully understood, but the basic reasoning is that your very own footsteps activate the same neural network over and over again and its a sound that the brain already recognizes, so an inhibitory response soon develops for that region of neurons. Another person's footsteps are suddenly activating an entirely different neural network, so in that crucial sense they are very different. It is not a matter that both disparate sounds are in competition with the brain's processing unit for attention, the brain ignores or suppresses the first, and towards the new sound it takes an active interest. The neurological terms for this is called habituation and deviance detection....both active fields of study. By now Athelwulf must be rubbing his eyes and banging his head against a desk.

Here is one study on mice conducted at Duke University in which the sounds a mouse associates with its own footsteps is suppressed through auditory cortical inhibitory neurons.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0520-5

Here is a study on how new auditory sounds (like Paul's footsteps) activates a stronger neural response:
Deviance Detection and Encoding Acoustic Regularity in the Auditory Midbrain
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view...190849061-e-19

from an excerpt:
"Midbrain neurons are capable of responding more rapidly and strongly when a new stimulus is not matching to a previously encoded regularity; a phenomenon referred to as deviance detection."


So we need to be very clear as to which types of sounds are masking agents, and which types are not: random sounds or white noise, stimulating intermittently various neural networks are masking agents; repetitive stimuli like one's own footsteps are not competing with anything, they give no new information and the brain is not processing them. It would make no sense if the brain was that inefficient.

If we were to consider again your example of looking into a monitor for an unanticipated radar signal, one would think that this was an assignment where the individuals stared into a monitor hour after hour, day after day until fatigue set in; and one imagines the sudden radar blip on the screen was over immediately....it not being repeated over a course of a minute or so, unlike the gait of Paul trodding behind Lechmere. This is more a case of fatigue then anything else, something i doubt afflicted Lechmere or Paul that morning. Personally, i do not think it is a good analogy.

As for Lechmere only noticing Paul once he stopped, that was not the case. Lechmere describes that he was moving forward towards the body, and then stopped when he heard Paul's footsteps. " It looked like a tarpaulin sheet, but walking to the middle of the road he saw that it was the figure of a woman.
At the same time, he heard a man about forty yards away coming up Buck's Row in the direction that the witness had come from."


As for walking down Buck's row at 3:38 am being a boring jaunt, Paul would disagree with you: "Few people like to come up and down here without being on their guard, for there are such terrible gangs about. There have been many knocked down and robbed at that spot."

It was a dangerous area.....why deny it?

Paul would have been following Cross/Lechmere for some time, so his distant footsteps would not be novel. Moreover, brain responses, while very interesting and not to be dismissed, are not the be all and end all of information. Some neural responses can get suppressed and yet, oddly, the signal might still be perceived. Conversely, we might not perceive a signal despite there being a neural response that differentiates it. For example, there are some studies with Amusics, people who cannot differentiate tones, that shows their brain can differentiate them - I've forgotten the reference though and can't pull it up as I'm at home and it's not my work. Our brain will, at some level, respond to things that do not reach our conscious awareness, and it is the latter that we're talking about. There are also weaker brain responses to expected stimulations (like self generated sounds), which still result in the stimulation being detected. We do not have the foggiest idea as to how the brain responses create awareness of things, so brain responses, while very interesting, are not actually the same as perception of the stimuli. One shouldn't conflate the two. I've been presenting research focused on what we're aware of.

Given Paul would have been behind Cross/Lechmere for some time, his footsteps, even if once noticed, would no longer be the novel stimuli you are trying to make them out to be. As such, the entire premise upon which you are building is flawed on that grounds. You're also handwaving at all of the literature on the perception of sensory signals, on masking, and on vigilance, etc, that I've mentioned. As for Paul's statement, that would be relevant if we were talking about Paul, but we're talking about Cross/Lechmere, and he makes no statement that implies he held those concerns. But of course, Paul sees someone in front of him stop, wait for him, etc, and so he becomes "hyper vigilant", just like Cross/Lechmere did when he saw a woman on the ground in front of him. Same response, but to different stimuli - you're just ignoring the fact that what set Cross/Lechmere into "what's all this then" mode was his seeing Polly, and it was then he becomes aware of the weak signals around him, including Paul's approach.

There's plenty of actual research on what we perceive behind what I've mentioned that yes, I believe what I said as I hope everyone here does, even if I disagree with them, so believe what you want.

- Jeff

[Doctored Whatsit]

This debate about the brain interpreting the sensory information it continually receives is very learned and informative, but does it lead us anywhere?

As I see it, my brain is today bombarded with messages about the ticking of a clock, the whirr of my computer fan, the faint sounds of music from the house next door, the taste of toothpaste, the presence of my tongue in my mouth, the faint smell of furniture polish, the awareness of people moving past my window, the contact of my clothes, the pressure of my feet on the floor, and probably countless other things. All of this has been noticed and filed away by my brain as "routine and unimportant" because if the brain didn't do this automatically we would all suffer from permanent sensory overload, unable to relax, and never able to sleep, and we wouldn't be alert to sudden events that might be far more important to our wellbeing. If we need to do so, we can easily check on these routine sensations, to ensure that they exist.

What our brains choose to file away as routine will vary from person to person, as we are all individuals with different likes and dislikes, and varying amounts of confidence. You might remain conscious of a particular smell because you adore or hate it, whereas it means nothing to me, so I ignore it. Equally, Lechmere seems to have been a confident person, and would probably have taken little notice of footsteps some distance behind him, accepting them as those of a man on his way to work. On the other hand, Paul seems to have been a cautious and slightly nervous individual, and footsteps behind him, in an area which he regarded as dangerous, might worry him, especially if they were hurrying and getting closer! But footsteps in front of him shouldn't seem so worrying, perhaps until they stopped and became silent ...

Any attempt to identify the significances of a person's reactions to various sensory stimuli requires us to have a detailed knowledge of the personalities and characteristics of the parties involved, and that is beyond us. I therefore don't think that there is likely to be any useful result from this line of discussion, however educational it might be.