Studies in auditory timing: 2. Rhythm patterns

Listeners discriminated between 6-tone rhythmic patterns that differed only in the delay of the temporal position of one of the tones. On each trial, feedback was given and the subject’s performance determined the amount of delay on the next trial. The 6 tones of the patterns marked off 5 intervals. In the first experiment, patterns comprised 3 “short” and 2 “long” intervals: 12121, 21121, and so forth, where the long (2) was twice the length of a short (1). In the second experiment, patterns were the complements of the patterns in the first experiment and comprised 2 shorts and 3 longs: 21212, 12212, and so forth. Each pattern was tested 45 times (5 positions of the delayed tone × 3 tempos × 3 replications). Consistent with previous work on simple interval discrimination, absolute discrimination (Δt in milliseconds) was poorer the longer the intervals (i.e., the slower the tempo). Measures of relative discrimination (Δt/t,wheret was the short interval, the long interval, or the average of 2 intervals surrounding the delayed tone) were better the slower the tempo. Beyond these global results, large interactions of pattern with position of the delayed tone and tempo suggest that different models of performance are needed to explain behavior at the different tempos. A Weber’s law model fit the slow-tempo data better than did a model based on positions of “natural accent” (Povel & Essens, 1985).

[1]  Ken W. Grant.  Erratum: ‘‘Identification of intonation contours by normally hearing and profoundly hearing‐impaired listeners’’ [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 1172–1178 (1987)] , 1987 .

[2]  P. Fraisse.  6 – Rhythm and Tempo , 1982 .

[3]  Peter Essens,et al.  Perception of Temporal Patterns , 1985 .

[4]  S Handel,et al.  The meter of syncopated auditory polyrhythms , 1981, Perception & psychophysics.

[5]  D. Robin,et al.  On the perceived unitization of repetitive auditory patterns , 1986, Perception & psychophysics.

[6]  David J. Getty,et al.  Discrimination of short temporal intervals: A comparison of two models , 1975 .

[7]  K W Grant.  Identification of intonation contours by normally hearing and profoundly hearing-impaired listeners. , 1987, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[8]  Mari Riess Jones,et al.  Does rule recursion make melodies easier to reproduce? If not, what does? , 1986, Cognitive Psychology.

[9]  James G. Martin,et al.  Reaction Time to Phoneme Targets as a Function of Rhythmic Cues in Continuous Speech. , 1974 .

[10]  P. Fraisse.  The psychology of time , 1963 .

[11]  Roger A. Kendall,et al.  The effect of melodic and temporal contour on recognition memory for pitch change , 1987, Perception & psychophysics.

[12]  M. Fourakis,et al.  Effects of Metrical Foot Structure on Syllable Timing , 1988, Language and Speech.

[13]  M. Steedman,et al.  The Perception of Musical Rhythm and Metre , 1977, Perception.

[14]  D J Povel,et al.  A theoretical framework for rhythm perception , 1984, Psychological research.

[15]  Gary E. Wittlich,et al.  The Stratification of Musical Rhythm , 1976 .

[16]  J J Bharucha,et al.  Disrupting the isochrony underlying rhythm: An asymmetry in discrimination , 1986, Perception & psychophysics.

[17]  L. Elliot.  Backward and Forward Masking of Probe Tones of Different Frequencies , 1962 .

[18]  C. Douglas Creelman,et al.  Human Discrimination of Auditory Duration , 1962 .

[19]  I. Pollack.  Asynchrony: the perception of temporal gaps within periodic auditory pulse patterns. , 1967, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[20]  A. Bregman,et al.  Primary auditory stream segregation and perception of order in rapid sequences of tones. , 1971, Journal of experimental psychology.

[21]  J G Martin,et al.  Rhythmic (hierarchical) versus serial structure in speech and other behavior. , 1972, Psychological review.

[22]  P. Killeen,et al.  Optimal timing and the Weber function. , 1987, Psychological review.

[23]  J. Thomassen.  Melodic accent: Experiments and a tentative model , 1982 .

[24]  A. Small,et al.  Temporal differential sensitivity for auditory stimuli. , 1962, American Journal of Psychology.

[25]  A B Kristofferson,et al.  A quantal step function in duration discrimination , 1980, Perception & psychophysics.

[26]  Stephen Handel,et al.  The contextual nature of rhythmic interpretation , 1983, Perception & psychophysics.

[27]  H. Levitt.  Transformed up-down methods in psychoacoustics. , 1971, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[28]  S M Abel,et al.  Duration discrimination of noise and tone bursts. , 1972, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[29]  Alexander Pollatsek,et al.  Detection of temporal gaps within and between perceptual tonal groups , 1974 .

[30]  I J Hirsh,et al.  Studies in auditory timing: 1. Simple patterns , 1990, Perception & psychophysics.

[31]  D. Povel,et al.  Accents in equitone sequences , 1981, Perception & psychophysics.

[32]  H C Longuet-Higgins,et al.  The Perception of Musical Rhythms , 1982, Perception.

[33]  Edward C. Carterette,et al.  Pitch and Duration as Determinants of Musical Space , 1985 .

[34]  D J Povel,et al.  Internal representation of simple temporal patterns. , 1981, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[35]  L. V. Noorden.  Temporal coherence in the perception of tone sequences , 1975 .

[36]  J. G. Martin,et al.  Rhythmic structure in auditory temporal pattern perception and immediate memory. , 1974, Journal of experimental psychology.