Pitch Memory for Two Tones
Lois Lawrence Elliott · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1971
Pitch memory for two successive tones with simple (musical third or fifth) or complex frequency ratio was studied in a recognition procedure. The 6-sec interval between target tones and comparison tones was either silent or contained two intervening tones. Pitch DL for each of two tones is about 1.5–2.0 times larger than for one tone. The DL for pairs of tones with complex frequency ratios is, under some circumstances, larger than that for pairs of tones with simple ratios. For “good pitch discriminators,” the task must become more difficult before ratio complexity affects performance than is true for “poor pitch discriminators.” At least two skill components, “frequency analyzing power” and memory, are present in these tasks and consistent individual differences occur for both. [Supported by an NINDS grant to CID.]