PERCEPTUAL SEPARATION OF SIMULTANEOUS COMPLEX TONES - THE EFFECT OF SLIGHTLY ASYNCHRONOUS ONSETS

Authors
Citation
J. Vos, PERCEPTUAL SEPARATION OF SIMULTANEOUS COMPLEX TONES - THE EFFECT OF SLIGHTLY ASYNCHRONOUS ONSETS, Acta acustica, 3(5), 1995, pp. 405-416
Citations number
42
Categorie Soggetti
Acoustics
Journal title
ISSN journal
10224793
Volume
3
Issue
5
Year of publication
1995
Pages
405 - 416
Database
ISI
SICI code
1022-4793(1995)3:5<405:PSOSCT>2.0.ZU;2-6
Abstract
Onset asynchrony has been put forward as one of the relevant factors i n auditory scene analysis (for references, see A.S. Bregman, MIT Press , Cambridge, 1990). In the present study this issue was further invest igated using a new paradigm: musically trained subjects were presented with two successive pairs of simultaneous complex tones and they had to decide whether the two pairs contained tones with the same pitch. I f this was the case they had to indicate which tones had been equal in pitch (the lower in each pair, the higher in each pair, the higher in the first pair and the lower in the second pair, or vice versa). In E xperiment 1, the frequency interval between the lower and the higher t ones of each pair varied between 150 and 750 cents, and in the asynchr onous conditions the onset of the higher tone was delayed by 20 ms. In Experiment 2 various musical intervals were used which were either pu re or slightly mistuned, and in the asynchronous conditions the onset of the higher tone preceded that of the lower tone by 25 ms. The resul ts showed that for the degree of onset asynchrony investigated, a faci litative effect of onset asynchrony on perceptual separation was only found in a small subset of conditions.