Timing perception of tonal sequences connected with glides
Satomi Tanaka, Minoru Tsuzaki, Hiroaki Kato · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
When we hear continuous sound signals, we extract the timing between each segment although each segmental boundary is acoustically unclear. In order to investigate on which points we perceive the temporal structures in sound signals, perceptual experiments were conducted to measure the sensitivity in detecting the temporal deviation by using sound signals containing frequency glides. The following question was raised: What would provide a more effective cue to detect a change in the temporal structures, the starting point or the ending point of glides? Five segments of steady parts, of which high and low were alternated, were connected with four frequency glides, while the amplitude was fixed. By randomizing the duration of glide parts and adjusting the duration of steady parts compemsatively, one can exclusively add a certain degree of fluctuation on the starting point or ending point of glides. The task was to detect a temporal deviation from an isochronous structure. The thresholds of detection were measured within three ranges of the center frequency. The detectability tended to be better under the starting point condition than under the ending point condition. The results were discussed in relation to a computational model of event detection. [Work supported by JSPS.]