title: Effects of Frequency Separation and Diotic/Dichotic Presentations on the Alternation Frequency Limits in Audition Derived from a Temporal Phase Discrimination Task.
abstract: Temporal phase discrimination is a useful psychophysical task to evaluate how sensory signals, synchronously detected in parallel, are perceptually bound by human observers. In this task two stimulus sequences synchronously alternate between two states (say, A-B-A-B and X-Y-X-Y) in either of two temporal phases (ie A and B are respectively paired with X and Y, or vice versa). The critical alternation frequency beyond which participants cannot discriminate the temporal phase is measured as an index characterizing the temporal property of the underlying binding process. This task has been used to reveal the mechanisms underlying visual and cross-modal bindings. To directly compare these binding mechanisms with those in another modality, this study used the temporal phase discrimination task to reveal the processes underlying auditory bindings. The two sequences were alternations between two pitches. We manipulated the distance between the two sequences by changing intersequence frequency separation, or presentation ears (diotic vs dichotic). Results showed that the alternation frequency limit ranged from 7 to 30 Hz, becoming higher as the intersequence distance decreased, as is the case with vision. However, unlike vision, auditory phase discrimination limits were higher and more variable across participants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan Japan Society for the Promotion of Science skanaya@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Shoko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kanaya
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan.
authors.forename: Waka
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fujisaki
authors.affiliation: NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Corporation, Japan.
authors.forename: Shin'ya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishida
authors.affiliation: NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Corporation, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeto
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Furukawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuhiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yokosawa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: audition; binding; cross-modal; temporal phase discrimination; time; vision