Perceptual Organization of Complex Auditory Sequences: Effect of Number of Simultaneous Subsequences and Frequency Separation

Previous findings on streaming are generalized to sequences composed of more than 2 subsequences. A new paradigm identified whether listeners perceive complex sequences as a single unit (integrative listening) or segregate them into 2 (or more) perceptual units (stream segregation). Listeners heard...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 1999-12, Vol.25 (6), p.1742-1759
Main Authors: Brochard, Renaud, Drake, Carolyn, Botte, Marie-Claire, McAdams, Stephen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attention
Audition
Auditory Discrimination
Biological and medical sciences
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Listening
Male
Perception
Perceptual Organization
Pitch (Frequency)
Pitch Discrimination
Psychoacoustics
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sensory perception
Serial Learning
Sound Spectrography
Stimulus Complexity
Stimulus Frequency
Time Perception
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Previous findings on streaming are generalized to sequences composed of more than 2 subsequences. A new paradigm identified whether listeners perceive complex sequences as a single unit (integrative listening) or segregate them into 2 (or more) perceptual units (stream segregation). Listeners heard 2 complex sequences, each composed of 1, 2, 3, or 4 subsequences. Their task was to detect a temporal irregularity within 1 subsequence. In Experiment 1, the smallest frequency separation under which listeners were able to focus on 1 subsequence was unaffected by the number of co-occurring subsequences; nonfocused sounds were not perceptually organized into streams. In Experiment 2, detection improved progressively, not abruptly, as the frequency separation between subsequences increased from 0.25 to 6 auditory filters. The authors propose a model of perceptual organization of complex auditory sequences.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.25.6.1742