TEMPORAL PATTERNING IN AN AUDITORY ILLUSION - THE VERBAL TRANSFORMATION EFFECT

When the same syllable is presented repeatedly to a human subject, it undergoes perceptual changes known as verbal transformations. However, the dynamics of such perceptual changes is poorly understood. In the present work we show that the main organization of the perceptual tran sitions is into pairs. This pairwise coupling is pronounced in the fre quency of switching to pair members, but not in their dwell times (the time spent perceiving a given phone mic form before switching to anot her form). We show that the paircoupled transforms of perception have a faster and more stable dynamic than the nonpaircoupled transforms. W e also demonstrate that the pairwise coupling is stronger than would b e expected from random arrangement of small numbers of transforms. The se characteristic patterns of verbal transforms have been predicted by a mathematical model, first proposed as a model of perceptual alterna tions of ambiguous visual figures.