Auditory stream segregation for alternating and synchronous tones.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 2013-01-01; 39(6): 1568-1580
DOI: 10.1037/a0032241
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1. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2013 Dec;39(6):1568-80. doi: 10.1037/a0032241.
Epub 2013 Apr 1.
Auditory stream segregation for alternating and synchronous tones.
Micheyl C(1), Hanson C, Demany L, Shamma S, Oxenham AJ.
Author information:
(1)Department of Psychology.
Sound sequences, such as music, are usually organized perceptually into
concurrent « streams. » The mechanisms underlying this « auditory streaming »
phenomenon are not completely known. The present study sought to test the
hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners’ ability to separate sound streams. To
test this hypothesis, both perceptual-organization judgments and performance
measures were used. In Experiment 1, listeners indicated whether they perceived
sequences of alternating or synchronous tones as a single stream or as two
streams. In Experiments 2 and 3, listeners detected rare changes in the intensity
of « target » tones at one frequency in the presence of synchronous or asynchronous
random-intensity « distractor » tones at another frequency. The results of these
experiments showed that, for large frequency separations between the tones, the
probability of perceiving two streams was lower on average for synchronous than
for alternating tones, and that sensitivity to intensity changes in the target
sequence was greater for asynchronous than for synchronous distractors. Overall,
these results are consistent with the hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners’
ability to form separate streams and/or to attend selectively to certain sounds
in the presence of other sounds, even when the target and distractor sounds are
well separated from each other in frequency.
DOI: 10.1037/a0032241
PMCID: PMC3973443
PMID: 23544676 [Indexed for MEDLINE]