Auditory attention as a major factor in the discrimination of tonal sequences

Autor: William J. Kelly, Henry W. Wroton, Charles S. Watson
Rok vydání: 1974
Předmět:
Zdroj: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 55:S18-S18
ISSN: 0001-4966
DOI: 10.1121/1.1919582
Popis: In two recent experiments we described the discriminability of acoustic patterns consisting of ten 40‐msec tonal components played in sequence, as measured with a same‐different psychophysical method. Listeners can readily discriminate two such patterns when the only difference is in the frequency of one of the ten tonal components, although values of the just‐detectible Δf increase by as much as an order of magnitude for early components as compared to later ones and for lower as compared to higher frequency components. In a new procedure listeners attempted to match the patterns by controlling the frequency of a single tonal component. They were able to routinely adjust that frequency within ± 10 Hz of its value in a standard pattern (which was presented in alternating sequence with the pattern in which they controlled the frequency of one component), although ± 60‐ to 100‐Hz values of Δf had been required for the same patterns to be discriminated in the same‐different procedure. Possible interpretations of this result are that the adjustment procedure enables extremely precise focusing of auditory attention, and that the site of intrapattern interference is more centrally located than previously suspected. [Supported by Grant No. 03856, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, Department of Health, Education and Welfare.]
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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