Abstract:

Perceptual interactions between pitch and timbre have been demonstrated repeatedly using discrimination tasks of static sounds in psychoacoustics (Allen & Oxenham, 2014; Marozeau & de Cheveigne, 2007). Furthermore, interactions may be influenced by the congruency of pitch and timbre cues in the stimulus. Larger interference effects on F0 and SC discrimination have been observed when shifts in F0 and SC occurred in the same direction across intervals as opposed to inverse directions (Allen & Oxenham, 2014). Previous interference effects were often prompted via pitch and timbre cues that were static over the duration of the stimulus. Timbre and pitch, however, are rarely this simple in natural sounds. In the current study, effects of stimulus congruency on pitch-timbre interactions are investigated in static and dynamic sounds. Listeners discriminated the pitch of static complex sounds and sounds with movement in the fundamental frequency (F0) and spectral centroid (SC) in two yes/no tasks. Measures of pitch sensitivity indicate that stimulus congruency effects perceptual interactions to both static and dynamic stimuli, with larger effects as the difference between cues increase. Analyses on cue movement and congruency suggest larger relative interaction effects for dynamic sounds relative to static sounds.

Publication(s):

Anderson, Ryan & Shen, Yi & Shofner, William. (2023). Pitch and Timbre Interactions in Dynamically Varying Complex Tones..

Authors:

Ryan Anderson, Yi Shen, William P Shofner