[Auditory temporal discrimination: effects of stimulus duration, inter-stimulus interval, attention].
A group of 5 normal hearing subjects were studied to determine their perception of the duration of auditory stimuli applied at constant frequency and intensity. In particular, their ability to discriminate between a pair of stimuli was measured. The minimum perceptible difference in duration was evaluated as the Weber fraction (WF) and was a function of the different stimuli duration (from 200 to 3200 ms) and the different interstimulus intervals (from 20 to 7200 ms). In addition, the interference stemming from two different attention conditions was also tested. The WF tended to increase for the 200,400 ms stimuli while it remained unchanged (at around 0.1) for higher durations. On the other hand, the WF was not affected by the inter-stimulus interval although it increased significantly according to attention interference. While these results confirm that estimates of auditory stimuli use attention controlled mechanisms they also suggest that information regarding duration is a stable perception temporarily residing in the short-term auditory memory and that it is not particularly susceptible to temporal decay.
Prosser
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S
Clinica Otorinolaringoiatrica, Università di Ferrara.
Peronio
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M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception