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PubMed2006

Separate attentional resources for vision and audition.

Current models of attention, typically claim that vision and audition are limited by a common attentional resource which means that visual performance should be adversely affected by a concurrent auditory task and vice versa. Here, we test this implication by measuring auditory (pitch) and visual (contrast) thresholds in conjunction with cross-modal secondary tasks and find that no such interference occurs. Visual contrast discrimination thresholds were unaffected by a concurrent chord or pitch discrimination, and pitch-discrimination thresholds were virtually unaffected by a concurrent visual search or contrast discrimination task. However, if the dual tasks were presented within the same modality, thresholds were raised by a factor of between two (for visual discrimination) and four (for auditory discrimination). These results suggest that at least for low-level tasks such as discriminations of pitch and contrast, each sensory modality is under separate attentional control, rather than being limited by a supramodal attentional resource. This has implications for current theories of attention as well as for the use of multi-sensory media for efficient informational transmission.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2004

The role of melodic and temporal cues in perceiving musical meter.

A number of different cues allow listeners to perceive musical meter. Three experiments examined effects of melodic and temporal accents on perceived meter in excerpts from folk songs scored in 6/8 or 3/4 meter. Participants matched excerpts with 1 of 2 metrical drum accompaniments. Melodic accents included contour change, melodic leaps, registral extreme, melodic repetition, and harmonic rhythm. Two experiments with isochronous melodies showed that contour change and melodic repetition predicted judgments. For longer melodies in the 2nd experiment, variables predicted judgments best at the beginning of excerpts. The final experiment, with rhythmically varied melodies, showed that temporal accents, tempo, and contour change were the strongest predictors of meter. The authors' findings suggest that listeners combine multiple melodic and temporal features to perceive musical meter.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Detection and discrimination of frequency modulation of complex signals.

Detection and discrimination of frequency modulation were studied for harmonic signals with triangular spectral envelopes. The center frequency of the stimuli was near 2 kHz; the fundamental frequency was near 100 Hz. To prevent the possibility that the discrimination was based on differences of initial or final frequencies, these frequencies were equal within and across modulations in each individual experiment. Differences between modulations consisted of differences in the trajectories between the initial and final frequencies. Performance worsened as the slopes of the spectral envelopes decreased. Addition of noise also impaired modulation discrimination. The dependence on the signal-to-noise ratio was similar to what is found for stationary stimuli: Discrimination of frequency modulation deteriorated more rapidly with decreasing signal-to-noise ratio when stimuli had shallow spectral slopes than when they had steep spectral slopes. In spite of the precautions taken (i.e., initial and final frequency the same), the discrimination of these stimuli was more likely based on quasistationary frequency discrimination than on discrimination of modulation rate. This conclusion is consistent with previous findings for pure tones presented in quiet that frequency discrimination is more acute than modulation-rate discrimination.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1994

The role of resolved and unresolved harmonics in pitch perception and frequency modulation discrimination.

A series of experiments investigated the influence of harmonic resolvability on the pitch of, and the discriminability of differences in fundamental frequency (F0) between, frequency-modulated (FM) harmonic complexes. Both F0 (62.5 to 250 Hz) and spectral region (LOW: 125-625 Hz, MID: 1375-1875 Hz, and HIGH: 3900-5400 Hz) were varied orthogonally. The harmonics that comprised each complex could be summed in either sine (0 degree) phase (SINE) or alternating sine-cosine (0 degree-90 degrees) phase (ALT). Stimuli were presented in a continuous pink-noise background. Pitch-matching experiments revealed that the pitch of ALT-phase stimuli, relative to SINE-phase stimuli, was increased by an octave in the HIGH region, for all F0's, but was the same as that of SINE-phase stimuli when presented in the LOW region. In the MID region, the pitch of ALT-phase relative to SINE-phase stimuli depended on F0, being an octave higher at low F0's, equal at high F0's, and unclear at intermediate F0's. The same stimuli were then used in three measures of discriminability: FM detection thresholds (FMTs), frequency difference limens (FDLs), and FM direction discrimination thresholds (FMDDTs, defined as the minimum FM depth necessary for listeners to discriminate between two complexes modulated 180 degrees out of phase with each other). For all three measures, at all F0's, thresholds were low (< 4% for FMTs, < 5% for FMDDTs, and < 1.5% for FDLs) when stimuli were presented in the LOW region, and high (> 10% for FMTs, > 7% for FMDDTs, and > 2.5% for FDLs) when presented in the HIGH region. When stimuli were presented in the MID region, thresholds were low for low F0's, and high for high F0's. Performance was not markedly affected by the phase relationship between the components of a complex, except for stimuli with intermediate F0's in the MID spectral region, where FDLs and FMDDTs were much higher for ALT-phase stimuli than for SINE-phase stimuli, consistent with their unclear pitch. This difference was much smaller when FMTs were measured. The interaction between F0 and spectral region for both sets of experiments can be accounted for by a single definition of resolvability.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1983

Sequential effects on the ERP in discriminating two stimuli.

Two auditory stimuli differing in pitch were presented in random order and equal probability with the constant inter-stimulus interval of 1 sec. The subject's task was to count one of these stimuli. The event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to each stimulus were averaged according to the immediately preceding stimulus sequence. It was found that when a few consecutive repetitions of one stimulus occurred, the ERP to the other stimulus immediately after those repetitions included features resembling those of the ERP to the infrequent stimulus usually observed in the so called 'oddball paradigm'. These features included, among other things, the mismatch negativity usually regarded as a scalp reflection of the neuronal mismatch process with an existing neuronal model. The mismatch negativity was accompanied by an 'N2b', a sharper and later negativity. Interestingly, N2b only occurred when the not-to-be-counted stimulus succeeded (one or several) counted stimuli but not when the order was reversed. This suggests that N2b reflects template mismatch, the occurrence of a stimulus mismatching with the mental image of the target stimulus voluntarily held by the subject.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Prosodic discrimination in patients with schizophrenia.

Fifteen patients with prominent positive symptoms of schizophrenia and 15 normal controls performed verbal prosodic and pure musical discrimination tasks, with changes in pitch and timing parameters. The patients' performance was comparable to that of controls on the discrimination of terminal pitch changes, but significantly poorer on the more difficult internal pitch discrimination. The latter deficit was positively correlated with the severity of their positive symptoms. The results suggest that patients have a deficit in processing fundamental aspects of prosody, which is associated with the presence of positive symptoms.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

A reevaluation of stimulus overselectivity: restricted stimulus control or stimulus control hierarchies.

Stimulus overselectivity, previously described as restricted stimulus control, was examined in preschool children. Twenty-seven subjects, after being trained to respond to a two-component auditory stimulus (S+) and not to respond to a different two-component auditory stimulus (S-), were tested to determine which stimulus elements of the complexes exerted control. Subjects that met the operational definition of overselectivity were found to have exhibited a hierarchy of stimulus control. What differentiated the subjects who would not be labeled "overselective" from those who would be was the placement of S+ and S- elements within the hierarchy, not that one type of subject had restricted stimulus control and another did not. The results indicate that the current conception of stimulus overselectivity may require revision. Treatment and research implications are discussed.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed2003

Relational discrimination learning between amplitude-modulated sounds in the rat.

We studied the cue used by rats to discriminate between amplitude-modulated (AM) sounds. Water-deprived rats were exposed to two sounds, and licking a spout during the presentation of one of the two (S+) was rewarded with water, while licking during the other (S-) was not. The AM depth was 100, 60 or 20%. Rats were trained to discriminate between 100 and 60% AM sounds over 2 consecutive days. On the next day, the performance in discriminating between 60 and 20% AM sounds was evaluated. Of the four possible combinations of stimuli, a good performance was observed only when the relationship between S+ and S- regarding the AM depth was kept constant throughout the experiments, indicating that the relationship regarding the AM depth was the cue used by the rats for the discrimination.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1979

Discrimination of uniform spectrum pulse sequences.

Random polarity-modulated sequences were produced with a uniform short-term spectrum over defined sampling intervals by a method described by Pierce, Lipes, and Cheetham [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 61, 1609-1621 (1977)]. These are identified as PLC sequences. By contrast, unconstrained random polarity-modulated pulse trains with a constant interpulse interval may depart from a short-term uniform spectrum. It is shown that listeners can clearly discriminate between PLC sequences and unconstrained random sequences, and can discriminate among different PLC sequences. This discrimination is more nearly related to the statistical redundancy of the PLC sequences. This discrimination is more nearly related to the statistical redundancy of the PLC sequences than to their run-length distribution. Such discrimination is relatively resistant to moderate degrees of temporal jitter and is obtained with other forms of information coding. Discrimination of PLC sequences is presumably based upon phase information.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1990

Simultaneous auditory discrimination.

Stimuli in many visual stimulus control studies typically are presented simultaneously; in contrast the stimuli in auditory discrimination studies are presented successively. Many everyday auditory stimuli that control responding occur simultaneously. This suggests that simultaneous auditory discriminations should be readily acquired. The purpose of the present experiment was to train rats in a simultaneous auditory discrimination. The apparatus consisted of a cage with two response levers mounted on one wall and a speaker mounted adjacent to each lever. A feeder was mounted on the opposite wall. In a go-right/go-left procedure, two stimuli were presented on each trial, a wide-band noise burst through one speaker and a 2-kHz complex signal through the other. The stimuli alternated randomly from side to side across trials, and the stimulus correlated with reinforcement for presses varied across subjects. The rats acquired the discrimination in 400 to 700 trials, and no response position preference developed during acquisition. The ease with which the simultaneous discrimination was acquired suggests that procedures, such as matching to sample, that require simultaneous presentation of stimuli can be used with auditory stimuli in animals having poor vision.

Animals↗
PubMed1975

"Shaping" of frequency discrimination performance using only intrinsic reinforcement.

This experiment compared two modes of practice at a difficult frequency discrimination, i.e., one in which the frequency difference was initially correctly discriminated only 65% of the trials in a two-alternative forced-choice task. One group of Ss (N = 13) was assigned to a progressive-practice group, in which the frequency difference to be discriminated was progressivley changed from a large, easy, difference to the difficult, small, difference. The other group of Ss (N = 13) received the same amount of practice as the first, but all at the difficult discrimination. Only the progressive-practice group improved their discrimination performance. Since no feedback was given, the effect of progressive practice is interpreted as "shaping" Ss' attentional response by virtue of the information provided by the successively more difficult discriminations. This "shaping" process is potentially available as a learning mechanism for other fine discriminations.

Attention↗
PubMed1979

Perception of conspecific vocalizations by Japanese macaques. Evidence for selective attention and neural lateralization.

Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) and control species (vervet, pigtailed macaque, bonnet macaque) were trained for food to respond to one class of recorded fuscata vocalizations and do not respond to a second class. A measure of neural lateralization was obtained by presenting the stimuli randomly to the right or the left ear, and comparing performance in the two ears (ear advantage method). Vocalizations were from Steven Green's field tapes. In experiment I, the two classes were Green's 'smooth early high coos' (SE) and 'smooth late high coos' (SL). Experiment II utilized the same vocalizations, but sorted into a high-pitched and a low-pitched class, i.e., orthogonally to the communication-relevant dimension. We found that (a) Japanese macaques learned the SE-SL discrimination faster than the pitch discrimination; (b) the reverse was true for the controls; (c) Japanese macaques showed a right-ear advantage (presumed left hemisphere advantage) for the SE-SL distinction, but not for the pitch discrimination, and (d) controls (with one exception) showed no ear advantage for either discrimination. These demonstrations of selective attention to communication-relevant parameters of conspecific vocalizations, and neural lateralization in the perception of these vocalizations, parallel similar findings in human speech perception.

Animals↗