An anomolous influence of tonal context on frequency discrimination
Henry W. Wroton, C. S. Watson · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1974
In several recent papers we have shown that frequency discrimination can be degraded by other tones which occur immediately before or after the test tone. In the present study a 40-msec test tone was always preceded by a 300-msec “leader” tone and followed by a 150-msec “trailer” tone. When the frequency of the leader-trailer tones are both 440 Hz, it is very difficult to discriminate between test tones of 435 and 445 Hz. Test tones of 438 and 448 Hz, however, can be discriminated almost perfectly. In other words, test tone frequencies that are symmetrically displaced above and below that of the leader-trailer are very difficult to discriminate; those displaced asymmetrically about that frequency can be much more easily discriminated. This effect of the leader-trailer on discrimination ranges from minimum to maximum within a smaller frequency band than can be accounted for by most critical-band-oriented theories of auditory frequency resolution.