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 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.
Brochard
Renaud
R
U Keele.
Drake
Carolyn
C
Botte
Marie-Claire
MC
McAdams
Stephen
S
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012691:Serial Learning; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013998:Time Perception