ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06
2pPP43. The effect of different component means and variances on the
discrimination of temporal patterns.
Toktam Sadralodabai
Robert D. Sorkin
Dept. of Psychol., Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611
Listeners were presented with two successive 9-tone sequences. The task
was to discriminate between the temporal patterns defined by the intertone
times in each sequence (tone duration=25 ms, tone frequency=1000 Hz). The
listener had to indicate whether the two patterns had the same or different
(partially correlated) temporal envelopes. A technique suggested by Lutfi [R.
Lutfi, 1339 (1995)], was used to determine the importance of each
temporal position on the listener's decision. In the first experiment, one of
the intertone times was assigned a different (either higher or lower) mean
duration than the others. This intertone time occurred either at an early
temporal position (2nd) or at a late position (6th). Results indicated that two
positions, the first temporal position and the position with the different
mean, had more influence on the listener's decision than other positions. In
the second experiment, the first 4 intertone times were assigned a different
variance than the last occurring 4 intertone times. Initial results suggest
that listeners give higher weights to the temporal positions with the lower
variance. [Work supported by AFSOR.]