The auditory continuity phenomenon: tones vs. glides (and other complex sounds)

[Chris Petkov <chris.petkov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> I have a question regarding the auditory continuity
> phenomenon.
> 
> 
> 
> The literature I have reviewed shows that listeners
> perceive tones and
> glides as maintaining continuity over breaks of up to 300
> ms, if the gap is
> 'filled' with louder noise ( e.g., Warren et al., 1972;
> Dannenbring &
> Bregman, 1976; Ciocca & Bregman, 1987; Nakajima & Sasaki,
> 1996; Drake &
> McAdams, 1999)
> 
> 
> 
> It seems plausible to think that the continuity effect
> for glides should be
> stronger due to frequency trajectory cues or feedforward
> effects. A pure
> tone can not take advantage from those types of cues; it
> has no movement and
> its trajectory is redundant.
> 
> 
> 
> Do you know any studies showing differences between
> perceived continuity of
> steady vs. glides?**
> 
> 
> 
>  Thank you
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elvira
> 

> 
> please, add also this reference:
> Vicario, G. (1960). L'effetto tunnel acustico. Rivista di
> Psicologia,  
> 54, 41-52.
> 
> m
> 
> ********************
> Massimo Grassi - PhD
> Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale
> Via Venezia 8 - 35131 Padova - Italy
> http://www.psy.unipd.it/~grassi
> 


Dear Elvira,

I'm not sure that the human literature on continuity has
quantified the tone vs. glide effect, but then again the
behavioral literature is quite extensive so it may be we
missed it.

We noticed exactly what you describe with our behavioral
study of macaques. We quantified their thresholds during
continuity using a very challenging psychophysical task. We
used the following stimuli: (1) tones, (2) FM glides, and
(3) 'coo' vocalizations. The results showed continuity was
stronger for the coo than the tone (but as a control
masking was about the same, Fig. 4), and as you proposed we
observed that thresholds were higher for the FM glide than
the tone during continuity (again masking was about the
same).

The paper is:

Petkov, O'Connor & Sutter. (2003) Illusory sound perception
in macaque monkeys.  J Neuroscience. 23: 9155-9161.  

I have the paper on our website (but mainly for viewing, to
be fair to the journal).

Best wishes,

-Chris Petkov

Max-Planck Institute 
for Biological Cybernetics
Tuebingen, Germany
http://www.kyb.mpg.de/~chrisp