title: A note about insensitivity to pitch-change direction.
abstract: Some listeners are insensitive to the direction of pure-tone frequency changes when the standard frequency is roved widely over trials, but less so when the standard frequency is fixed and trial-by-trial feedback is provided. The present experiment tested the hypothesis that fixing the standard frequency and providing feedback is advantageous for direction-impaired listeners because under these conditions the listeners can learn to respond correctly without genuinely perceiving frequency-change direction. This hypothesis was ruled out by the experiment. It appears instead that direction-impaired listeners find it difficult to ignore the irrelevant frequency changes introduced by roving.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. smathias@cbs.mpg.de
authors.forename: Samuel R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Mathias
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Bailey
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Semal
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Demany
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D025461:Feedback, Physiological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013017:Sound Localization