Pitch and timbre interfere when both are parametrically varied

PLoS One. 2014 Jan 21;9(1):e87065. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087065. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Pitch and timbre perception are both based on the frequency content of sound, but previous perceptual experiments have disagreed about whether these two dimensions are processed independently from each other. We tested the interaction of pitch and timbre variations using sequential comparisons of sound pairs. Listeners judged whether two sequential sounds were identical along the dimension of either pitch or timbre, while the perceptual distances along both dimensions were parametrically manipulated. Pitch and timbre variations perceptually interfered with each other and the degree of interference was modulated by the magnitude of changes along the un-attended dimension. These results show that pitch and timbre are not orthogonal to each other when both are assessed with parametrically controlled variations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Auditory Perception / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Pitch Discrimination / physiology
  • Pitch Perception / physiology*
  • Reaction Time / physiology
  • Sound
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

Research and publication support was provided by the SISSA Cognitive Neuroscience Sector PHD program (http://www.sissa.it/cns/) and Duke University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.