Detection of changes in frequency- and time-transposed auditory patterns

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Abstract
It is well known that listeners can recognize familiar melodies that have been transposed in pitch or played in a different tempo [e.g., J. C. Bartlett and W. J. Dowling, J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 6, 501–515 (1980); R. Francès, La perception de la musique (J. Vrin, Paris, 1958)]. However, the effect of transposition on the recognition of unfamiliar auditory patterns that do not have the pitch-material or stuctural constraints of musical patterns has not been investigated. Listeners' abilities to detect frequency changes in transpositions of randomly generated five-tone patterns were examined using a same-different adaptive-tracking procedure. On each trial a standard pattern was followed by a comparison pattern that was transposed in frequency, time, or both dimensions. The magnitude of a frequency difference introduced in a single tonal component was adjusted from trial to trial, based on the listener's performance. Frequency and time transpositions consisted of increases in frequency and duration, respectively, ranging from 12%–100%. Listeners were told to ignore the changes in absolute frequency and time and make their judgments on the basis of the pattern of intervals. Increases in both frequency and temporal transposition lead to decrements in performance. However, on the average, frequency transposition yields more severely degraded performance than temporal transposition in the range of conditions studied. [Work supported by AFOSR and NIH.]

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