GROUPING IN PITCH PERCEPTION - EVIDENCE FOR SEQUENTIAL CONSTRAINTS

Evidence is presented that sequential auditory grouping constraints ap ply to the perception of pitch. Experiment 1 shows that the pitch chan ges produced by mistuning the fourth harmonic of a 90-ms 12-harmonic 1 55-Hz fundamental complex tone are substantially reduced when the comp lex is preceded by four 90-ms tones at the same frequency as the mistu ned component. Both the pitch changes and their reduction by the tonal sequence precursor remain when the mistuned component and the precurs or are presented contralateral to the remaining components. Experiment 2 shows that reducing the level of the same mistuned component reduce s the size of the pitch change, but only if the mistuned component is presented ipsilaterally. To the extent that adaptation can be equated with a physical reduction in level, this result provides further evide nce against peripheral adaptation playing a significant role in the au ditory grouping of harmonics in pitch perception. (C) 1995 Acoustical Society of America.