Factors affecting the duration effect in pitch perception for unresolved complex tones.

Previous research has shown that fundamental frequency (F0) discrimination thresholds for complex tones containing unresolved harmonics decrease as the duration of the tone increases [White and Plack, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 103, 2051-2063 (1998)]. In this paper F0 discrimination was measured as a function of duration for complexes with F0s of 62.5, 125, and 250 Hz, bandpass filtered into two spectral regions (2750-3750 and 5500-7500 Hz). The harmonics were summed either in sine phase (SINE) or with alternating sine-cosine phase (ALT), which affects the envelope of the waveform and the pitch of the complex. Tone duration was 20, 40, 80, and 160 ms. The improvement in F0 discrimination with duration increased with decreasing F0. When harmonics where spectrally filtered between 2750 and 3750 Hz, for complexes with an F0 of 62.5 Hz, F0 discrimination thresholds decreased from approximately 30% for a 20-ms tone to approximately 3% for a 160-ms tone. For complexes with an F0 of 250 Hz, thresholds decreased from 3% for a 20-ms tone to 1% for a 160-ms tone: a lower envelope repetition rate led to a larger change in performance with increasing duration. The phase manipulation also affected the size of the duration effect, in that the effect was less for an ALT complex compared to a SINE complex with the same F0, consistent with the change in envelope repetition rate. Overall, the results suggest that for unresolved complex tones it is primarily envelope repetition rate, not spectral region, that determines both the F0 discrimination threshold and the size of the duration effect.