Subject: The auditory continuity phenomenon: tones vs. glides (and other complex sounds) From: Chris Petkov <chris.petkov@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 06:14:38 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>> > 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