Rhythmic masking release: effects of asynchrony, temporal overlap, harmonic relations, and source separation on cross-spectral grouping.
The rhythm created by spacing a series of brief tones in a regular pattern can be disguised by interleaving identical distractors at irregular intervals. The disguised rhythm can be unmasked if the distractors are allocated to a separate stream from the rhythm by integration with temporally overlapping captors. Listeners identified which of 2 rhythms was presented, and the accuracy and rated clarity of their judgment was used to estimate the fusion of the distractors and captors. The extent of fusion depended primarily on onset asynchrony and degree of temporal overlap. Harmonic relations had some influence, but only an extreme difference in spatial location was effective (dichotic presentation). Both preattentive and attentionally driven processes governed performance.
Turgeon
Martine
M
Sensory Motor Neuroscience Laboratory, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham.
Bregman
Albert S
AS
Auditory Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychology, McGill University.
Roberts
Brian
B
Auditory Perception Laboratory, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham.
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013017:Sound Localization; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013998:Time Perception