SENSORY CONSONANCE AND THE PERCEPTUAL SIMILARITY OF COMPLEX-TONE HARMONIC INTERVALS - TESTS OF ADULT AND INFANT LISTENERS

Two experiments examined the influence of sensory consonance on the pe rceptual similarity of simultaneous pairs of complex tones (harmonic i ntervals). In experiment 1, adults heard a sequence of five consonant intervals (each a perfect fifth, or 7 semitones) and judged whether a subsequently presented test interval was a member of the sequence. Dis crimination performance was better when the test interval was dissonan t (tritone, 6 semitones) rather than consonant (perfect fourth, 5 semi tones), despite the fact that the change in interval width was twice a s great for the consonant than for the dissonant comparison. In experi ment 2, 7-month-old infants were tested with an operant headturn proce dure in a similar design and exhibited an identical pattern of respond ing. Hence, for both age groups, consonance was more important than in terval width in determining the perceived similarity of harmonic inter vals. (C) 1996 Acoustical Society of America.