Jan Zera
David M. Green
Psychoacoust. Lab., Psychol. Dept., Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611
Detecting asynchrony in either the temporal onset or offset of individual components in a multicomponent complex was investigated. A synchronous standard was constructed with all components having the same duration and starting and stopping simultaneously. The asynchronous standard was constructed by linearly delaying successive components of a complex, either at onset or at offset. The signal was created by altering the temporal position of a single component of the complex, either at onset or offset, relative to its temporal position in the synchronous or asynchronous standard. Thresholds were measured at onset or offset both for harmonic signals and for complexes in which the components were logarithmically spaced in frequency. For the onset condition in either the harmonic or logarithmic complex, the thresholds for detecting the asynchrony of a single component were greatly increased when the standard was asynchronous as opposed to synchronous. For the offset condition, the thresholds were not greatly affected by whether the standard was synchronous or asynchronous. [Research supported by NIH, AFOSR, and a Fulbright fellowship.]