Discrimination of permuted orders of tones having the same pitch but different qualities
Daniel A. Gardner, Brad S. Brubaker, Richard M. Warren · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1984
Untrained subjects judged whether two sequences of tones were different or the same. Each sequence consisted of three tonal items (A = filtered pulse train, B = sinusoidal tone, C = filtered square wave) which were arranged either in the form [ABCABC⋯A] followed by [ACBACB⋯A] (different) or [ABCABC⋯A] followed by [ABCABC⋯A] (same). Each tonal item had the same waveform repetition frequency (800 Hz) and pitch, but possessed a distinctive quality. Duration of items was the same within sequence pairs, and was varied systematically from item durations of several seconds (permitting easy verbal labeling of components in the proper order) down to 10 ms (components could not be recognized). Accuracy of judgments was well above chance at each item duration. It is suggested that discrimination of differences in the order of items was accomplished through a naming of individual components in order of occurrence for longer item durations, and through recognition of qualitative differences between sequences for brief item durations. Implications for perception of sequences of sounds in speech and music will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH and NSF.]