Ear of input as a determinant of pitch-memory interference

Six experiments to evaluate the effect of presentation ear on pitch-memory interference were conducted using undergraduates as listeners. The task was to compare the pitch of two tones that were separated by an interval that included eight interpolated tones; the interpolated tones were presented either ipsilaterally or contralaterally to the presentation ear of the comparison tones. When the ear of interpolated-tone presentations was blocked, and therefore predictable, ipsilateral interference was greater than contralateral. In contrast, when the interpolated-tone presentation ear was varied randomly from trial to trial, ipsilateral and contralateral interferences were equivalent. These results are analogous to results found in previously reported auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) experiments and suggest that the ABRM effect may be due, in part, to pitch-memory interference. Implications for theories of auditory processing and memory are discussed.     

Separate and shared sources of dual-task cost in stimulus identification and response selection

There is often strong interference if a second target stimulus (T2) is presented before processing of a prior target stimulus (T1) is complete. In the "Psychological Refractory Period" (PRP) paradigm, responses are speeded and interference manifests as increased response time for T2. In the "Attentional Blink" (AB) paradigm, stimuli are masked and responses unspeeded; interference manifests as reduced T2 accuracy. While different causes have usually been considered for PRP and AB phenomena, recent evidence has supported a unified account based on a single, shared restriction on concurrent processing. Here we show that a full assessment of separate and shared resource limitations requires direct comparison of hybrid PRP/AB trials with corresponding pure PRP and AB cases. Randomizing trial types in such a comparison also brings substantial benefit in addressing possible changes in task preparation or readiness. The data from two such experiments--combining speeded auditory (SA) and unspeeded visual (UV) task events--provide clear evidence for both separate and shared resource limitations. Often interference is strongest for T1 and T2 events of the same type, reflecting predominantly different limitations in SA and UV processing. With modest increases in demand, however, interference between different event types can also be made arbitrarily large, reflecting arbitrarily important shared limitations. For even such simple tasks as these, T--T2 interference reflects a combination of relatively local and relatively global sources.     

Backward masking, the suffix effect, and preperceptual storage

This article considers the use of auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) and stimulus suffix experiments as indexes of preperceptual auditory storage. In the first part of the article, two ABRM experiments that failed to demonstrate a mask disinhibition effect found previously in stimulus suffix experiments are reported. The failure to demonstrate mask disinhibition is inconsistent with an explanation of ABRM in terms of lateral inhibition. In the second part of the article, evidence is presented to support the conclusion that the suffix effect involves the contributions of later processing stages and does not provide an uncontaminated index of preperceptual storage. In contrast, it is claimed that ABRM experiments provide the most direct index of the temporal course of perceptual recognition. Partial-report tasks and other paradigms are also evaluated in terms of their contributions to an understanding of preperceptual auditory storage. Differences between interruption and integration masking are discussed along with the role of preperceptual auditory storage in speech perception.     

Auditory imagery from musical notation in expert musicians

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that musical notation can trigger auditory images. Expert musicians silently read scores containing well-known themes embedded into the notation of an embellished phrase and judged if a tune heard aloud thereafter was the original theme (i.e., melodic target) or not (i.e., melodic lure). Three experiments were conducted employing four score-reading conditions: normal nondistracted reading, concurrent rhythmic distraction, phonatory interference, and obstruction by auditory stimuli. The findings demonstrate that phonatory interference impaired recognition of original themes more than did the other conditions. We propose that notational audiation is the silent reading of musical notation resulting in auditory imagery. The research suggests that it also elicits kinesthetic-like phonatory processes.     

Crossmodal attention switching: Auditory dominance in temporal discrimination tasks

Visual stimuli are often processed more efficiently than accompanying stimuli in another modality. In line with this “visual dominance”, earlier studies on attentional switching showed a clear benefit for visual stimuli in a bimodal visual–auditory modality-switch paradigm that required spatial stimulus localization in the relevant modality. The present study aimed to examine the generality of this visual dominance effect. The modality appropriateness hypothesis proposes that stimuli in different modalities are differentially effectively processed depending on the task dimension, so that processing of visual stimuli is favored in the dimension of space, whereas processing auditory stimuli is favored in the dimension of time. In the present study, we examined this proposition by using a temporal duration judgment in a bimodal visual–auditory switching paradigm. Two experiments demonstrated that crossmodal interference (i.e., temporal stimulus congruence) was larger for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, suggesting auditory dominance when performing temporal judgment tasks. However, attention switch costs were larger for the auditory modality than for visual modality, indicating a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying crossmodal competition in stimulus processing and modality-specific biasing of attentional set.     

音乐情境中自我参照加工的时间特征：来自ERPs的证据

采用事件相关电位技术, 考察在有情境条件下不同层面的自我参照加工的特性及其神经机制。实验发现,在两种音乐情境条件下个体自我参展刺激所激发的P300波幅比集体自我参照刺激和非自我刺激更大,而集体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅比非自我刺激更大;两种音乐情境条件下个体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅差异显著,而集体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅差异不显著。研究结果表明了在不同的情境中,个体自我参照加工的差异较大,表现出不稳定的特征;个体自我参照加工与集体自我参照加工的神经机制是不同的。这些结果还可能表明了相对于集体自我来讲,个体自我是自我的核心层面。     

Processing Pitch and Temporal Structures in Music Reading: Independent or Interactive Processing Mechanisms?

Music provides a useful domain in which to study how the different attributes of complex multidimensional stimuli are processed both separately and in combination. Much research has been devoted to addressing how the dimension of pitch and time are co-processed in music listening tasks. Neuropsychological studies have provided evidence for a certain degree of independence between pitch and temporal processing, although there are also many experimental reports favouring interactive models of pitch and temporal processing. Here we extended these investigations by examining the processing of pitch and temporal structures when music is presented in the visual modality (i.e. in the form of music notation). In two experiments, musician subjects were presented with visual musical stimuli containing both pitch and temporal information for a brief amount of time, and they were subsequently required to recall both the pitch and temporal information. In Experiment 1, we documented that concurrent, unattended, pitch and rhythmic auditory interference stimuli disrupted the recall of pitch, but not time. In Experiment 2, we showed that manipulating the tonal structure of the visual presentation stimuli affected the recall of pitch, but not time. On the other hand, manipulating the metrical properties of the visual stimuli affected recall of time, and pitch to a certain extent. Taken together, these results suggest that the processing of pitch is constrained by the processing of time, but the processing of time is not affected by the processing of pitch. These results do not support either strong independence or interactive models of pitch and temporal processing, but they suggest that the processing of time can occur independently from the processing of pitch when performing a written recall task.     

Investigating the effects of inversion on configural processing with an audiovisual temporal-order judgment task

Research has shown that inversion is more detrimental to the perception of faces than to the perception of other types of visual stimuli. Inverting a face results in an impairment of configural information processing that leads to slowed early face processing and reduced accuracy when performance is tested in face recognition tasks. We investigated the effects of inverting speech and non-speech stimuli on audiovisual temporal perception. Upright and inverted audiovisual video clips of a person uttering syllables (experiments 1 and 2), playing musical notes on a piano (experiment 3), or a rhesus monkey producing vocalisations (experiment 4) were presented. Participants made unspeeded temporal-order judgments regarding which modality stream (auditory or visual) appeared to have been presented first. Inverting the visual stream did not have any effect on the sensitivity of temporal discrimination responses in any of the four experiments, thus implying that audiovisual temporal integration is resilient to the effects of orientation in the picture plane. By contrast, the point of subjective simultaneity differed significantly as a function of orientation only for the audiovisual speech stimuli but not for the non-speech stimuli or monkey calls. That is, smaller auditory leads were required for the inverted than for the upright-visual speech stimuli. These results are consistent with the longer processing latencies reported previously when human faces are inverted and demonstrates that the temporal perception of dynamic audiovisual speech can be modulated by changes in the physical properties of the visual speech (ie by changes in orientation).     

Nonconcurrently presented auditory tones reduce distraction

Recent research has demonstrated that task-irrelevant stimuli presented simultaneously with a target-distractor stimulus reduce distraction and improve selective attention. In studies examining this reduced interference effect, visual selective attention tasks and concurrently presented task-irrelevant stimuli are used. We report first evidence for a similar effect in the auditory domain and with nonconcurrent stimuli (i.e., the task-irrelevant stimuli are presented before the target). The effect of nonconcurrently presented auditory tones on an auditory Stroop task developed by Leboe and Mondor (Psychological Research, 71, 568--575, 2007) was investigated. Stroop interference was reduced when task-irrelevant tones were presented before the Stroop stimulus. We conclude that task-irrelevant stimuli can improve selective attention not only when presented concurrently, but also when presented before the selective attention task. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that interference reduction is due to perceptual dilution caused by task-irrelevant stimuli.     

基于视听双通道的音乐情绪冲突效应及优势通道研究

为探讨基于视听双通道的音乐情绪冲突效应、冲突情境下的优势加工通道和音乐经验对结果的影响,本研究采用音乐表演视频为材料,比较音乐组和非音乐组被试在一致型和不一致型视听双通道下的情绪评定速度、准确性及强度。结果发现:(1)一致型条件下的情绪评定更准确且更强烈;(2)不一致型条件下,被试更多以听觉通道的情绪线索为依据进行情绪类型评定;(3)非音乐组被试比音乐组被试更依赖视觉通道的情绪线索。结果表明:通道间情绪信息的不一致阻碍了音乐情绪加工; 听觉通道是音乐情绪冲突情境下的优势加工通道; 音乐经验降低了情绪冲突效应对音乐组被试的干扰。     

没听到？“听”到！——来自听觉表象神经机制研究的证据

近年来听觉表象开始得到关注,相关研究包括言语声音、音乐声音、环境声音的听觉表象三类。本文梳理了认知神经科学领域对上述三种听觉表象所激活的脑区研究,比较了听觉表象和听觉对应脑区的异同,并展望了听觉表象未来的研究方向。     

Perceptual interference decays over short unfilled intervals

The perceptual interference effect refers to the fact that object identification is directly related to the amount of information available at initial exposure. The present article investigated whether perceptual interference would dissipate when a short, unfilled interval was introduced between exposures to a degraded object. Across three experiments using both musical and pictorial stimuli, identification performance increased directly with the length of the unfilled interval. Consequently, significant perceptual interference was obtained only when the interval between exposures was relatively short (< 500 msec for melodies; < 300 msec for pictures). These results are consistent with explanations that attribute perceptual interference to increased perceptual noise created by exposures to highly degraded objects. The data also suggest that perceptual interference is mediated by systems that are not consciously controlled by the subject and that perceptual interference in the visual domain decays more rapidly than perceptual interference in the auditory domain.     

Musicians experience less age-related decline in central auditory processing

Age-related decline in auditory perception reflects changes in the peripheral and central auditory systems. These age-related changes include a reduced ability to detect minute spectral and temporal details in an auditory signal, which contributes to a decreased ability to understand speech in noisy environments. Given that musical training in young adults has been shown to improve these auditory abilities, we investigated the possibility that musicians experience less age-related decline in auditory perception. To test this hypothesis we measured auditory processing abilities in lifelong musicians (N = 74) and nonmusicians (N = 89), aged between 18 and 91. Musicians demonstrated less age-related decline in some auditory tasks (i.e., gap detection and speech in noise), and had a lifelong advantage in others (i.e., mistuned harmonic detection). Importantly, the rate of age-related decline in hearing sensitivity, as measured by pure-tone thresholds, was similar between both groups, demonstrating that musicians experience less age-related decline in central auditory processing.     

Psychmuse: A Macintosh system for psychomusicology research

A software system developed with HyperCard has been designed to support research relying on musical stimuli. The software accesses a set of digitized sounds in memory that consist of chromatic scale notes for the piano, harp, and guitar. Menu options allow experimenters to create monophonic melodies, to arrange melodies in a prescribed order, and to present them in a flexible format for a variety of psychological tasks. In addition to supporting experimental research projects, the software can also be used to demonstrate certain fundamental principles of auditory perception and cognitive psychology.     

Temporal coding in rhythm tasks revealed by modality effects

Temporal coding has been studied by examining the perception and reproduction of rhythms and by examining memory for the order of events in a list. We attempt to link these research programs both empirically and theoretically. Glenberg and Swanson (1986) proposed that the superior recall of auditory material, compared with visual material, reflects more accurate temporal coding for the auditory material. In this paper, we demonstrate that a similar modality effect can be produced in a rhythm task. Auditory rhythms composed of stimuli of two durations are reproduced more accurately than are visual rhythms. Furthermore, it appears that the auditory superiority reflects enhanced chunking of the auditory material rather than better identification of durations.     

Garner and congruence effects in the speeded classification of bimodal signals

The role of attention in speeded Garner classification of concurrently presented auditory and visual signals was examined in 4 experiments. Within-trial interference (i.e., congruence effects) occurred regardless of the attentional demands of the task. Between-trials interference (i.e., Garner interference) occurred only under conditions of divided attention when making judgments about auditory signals. Of importance, the data show congruence effects in the absence of Garner interference. Such a pattern has been rarely reported in studies of the classification of purely visual stimuli and contradicts theoretical accounts asserting that the effects share a common locus. The data question the notion that Garner classification reveals fundamental insights about the nature of the perceptual processing of bimodal stimuli.     

Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: evidence for developmental reorganization

To what extent do infants represent the absolute pitches of complex auditory stimuli? Two experiments with 8-month-old infants examined the use of absolute and relative pitch cues in a tone-sequence statistical learning task. The results suggest that, given unsegmented stimuli that do not conform to the rules of musical composition, infants are more likely to track patterns of absolute pitches than of relative pitches. A 3rd experiment tested adults with or without musical training on the same statistical learning tasks used in the infant experiments. Unlike the infants, adult listeners relied primarily on relative pitch cues. These results suggest a shift from an initial focus on absolute pitch to the eventual dominance of relative pitch, which, it is argued, is more useful for both music and speech processing.     

Effects of same-modality interference on immediate serial recall of auditory and visual information.

Two studies investigated the effects of same-modality interference on the immediate serial recall of auditorily and visually presented stimuli. Typically, research in which this task is used has been conducted in quiet rooms, excluding auditory information that is extraneous to the auditorily presented stimuli. However, visual information such as background items clearly within the subject's view have not been excluded during visual presentation. Therefore, in both the present studies, the authors used procedures that eliminated extra-list visual interference and introduced extra-list auditory interference. When same-modality interference was eliminated, weak visual recency effects were found, but they were smaller than those that were generated by auditorily presented items. Further, mid-list and end-of-list recall of visually presented stimuli was unaffected by the amount of interfering visual information. On the other hand, the introduction of auditory interference increased mid-list recall of auditory stimuli. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the mid-list effect occurred with a moderate, but not with a minimal or maximal, level of auditory interference, indicating that moderate amounts of auditory interference had an alerting effect that is not present in typical visual interference.     

Auditory local bias and reduced global interference in autism

Processing local elements of hierarchical patterns at a superior level and independently from an intact global influence is a well-established characteristic of autistic visual perception. However, whether this confirmed finding has an equivalent in the auditory modality is still unknown. To fill this gap, 18 autistics and 18 typical participants completed a melodic decision task where global and local level information can be congruent or incongruent. While focusing either on the global (melody) or local level (group of notes) of hierarchical auditory stimuli, participants have to decide whether the focused level is rising or falling. Autistics showed intact global processing, a superior performance when processing local elements and a reduced global-to-local interference compared to typical participants. These results are the first to demonstrate that autistic processing of auditory hierarchical stimuli closely parallels processing of visual hierarchical stimuli. When analyzing complex auditory information, autistic participants present a local bias and a more autonomous local processing, but not to the detriment of global processing.     

Feature modulation search: a novel memory search model that extends the perceptual interference effect to musical stimuli

Although most research in the perceptual interference literature has used visual stimuli, recent experiments have replicated this effect using musical stimuli. Two experiments investigated whether musical and visual demonstrations of the effect are produced by a common mechanism by examining whether the provision of incorrect cues would impair melodic object identification in the perceptual interference paradigm. Whereas incorrect cues typically do not affect visual object identification, they reduced melody identification both when the subjects generated the cues and when the experimenter provided them. A novel model (feature modulation search) is presented to account for perceptual interference in musical stimuli. The model has potential applications for the larger perceptual interference literature and for related phenomena in which target-related information impairs cognition.