Training the absolute identification of pitch

Two methods for training the absolute judgment of pitch, reference training and series training, were studied. Reference training concentrated during training on the identification of three reference tones in a set of nine pure tones, while series training gave equal weight during training to the identification of all nine tones. Results of pre- and posttraining tests, scored for the number of correct judgments, showed that reference training was more effective than series training for listeners with musical experience. In addition, discriminability (d′) scaling of pre- and posttest performance indicated that reference training was particularly effective for training listeners with musical experience when the nine tones of a set were grouped into three pitch classes—high, medium, and low pitch. Listeners without musical experience benefited from both training methods, but their overall improvement was less than that for musical listeners.     

Simulation of the filtering role of habituation to stimuli

In the context of a medium-term study designed to integrate the simulation of different types and processes of learning-such as classical, operant, and some cognitive types--one must start with other more elementary ones that are facilitators of the more complex types and processes. Of special interest is habituation, owing to the filtering out of irrelevant stimuli, which means that the simulated agent does not have to respond to them. This paper presents two difference functions constructed to computationally simulate the characteristics that define habituation. The behavior of these functions is described, as are differences arising from stimulus intensity and interstimulus intervals. Results are compared with existing empirical data.     

Impaired processing of prosodic and musical patterns after right hemisphere damage

The distinction between the processing of musical information and segmental speech information (i.e., consonants and vowels) has been much explored. In contrast, the relationship between the processing of music and prosodic speech information (e.g., intonation) has been largely ignored. We report an assessment of prosodic perception for an amateur musician, KB, who became amusic following a right-hemisphere stroke. Relative to matched controls, KB's segmental speech perception was preserved. However, KB was unable to discriminate pitch or rhythm patterns in linguistic or musical stimuli. He was also impaired on prosodic perception tasks (e.g., discriminating statements from questions). Results are discussed in terms of common neural mechanisms that may underlie the processing of some aspects of both music and speech prosody.     

Sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range

Striking changes in sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range are reported. Participants were presented a key-defining context (do-mi-do-sol) followed by one of the 12 chromatic tones of the octave, and rated the goodness of fit of the probe tone to the context. The set of ratings, called the probe-tone profile, was compared to an established standardised profile for the Western tonal hierarchy. The presentation of context and probe tones at low and high pitch registers resulted in significantly reduced sensitivity to tonality. Sensitivity was especially poor for presentations in the lowest octaves where inharmonicity levels were substantially above the threshold for detection. We propose that sensitivity to tonality may be influenced by pitch salience (or a co-varying factor such as exposure to pitch distributional information) as well as suprathreshold inharmonicity.     

Some psycholinguistic aspects of person perception

Adjective-noun combinations in person perception are analyzed from an integration-theoretical view, with special reference to judgments of likableness, occupational proficiency, and social value. Different theoretical considerations are shown to apply to these three judgment dimensions, but all can be conceptualized in terms of the valuation and integration operations of integration theory. Experimental support for this conceptual analysis is given for likableness and occupational proficiency. Advantages of the integration-theoretical analysis over congruity formulations are pointed out.     

When Time Is of the Essence: Averaging, Aspiration, and the Short Run

A variety of experiments have demonstrated that people's choices among gambles differ according to whether the gamble is to be played just once (the unique case) or multiple times (the repeated case). The reason for this difference appears to be that people are acting in each case so as to increase the likelihood that the chosen alternative will leave them better off than the nonchosen alternative. This paper explores four themes that bear on the difference between unique and repeated gambles. The first traces the historical and theoretical role of weighted averaging in risky choice. The second defends the usefulness of probability-based rules for choices involving aspiration levels. The third presents the idea that choices under risk may reflect dual criteria, one based in weighted averaging and the other based in stochastic control. The fourth challenges the conventional criteria by which choices are judged to be rational or irrational.     

Detection of metric structure in auditory figural patterns

This series of experiments dealt with discrimination between two temporal patterns differing only by the insertion of an additional silent gap. In Experiment 1, patterns varied in metric and figural structure. Metric structure is described as the sense of temporal regularity that may occur between subjectively accented tones. Figural structure is described as the grouping of temporally adjacent tones separated by silences. Standard patterns were either strongly or weakly metric; comparison patterns differed from the standards by the insertion of a silence that disrupted either the metric structure alone or both the metric and the figural structures. Experiment 1 provided support for the roles of both metric and figural structures and provided support for the clock-induction model of Povel and Essens (1985) as an account of metric processing. In Experiments 2-4, discrimination of patterns with differing metric structures but identical figural structures was examined more closely. Rate of presentation of the patterns was varied. Multiple regression indicated that, independent of rate variations, discrimination improved as the absolute (not relative) duration of the silent gap increased. We argue that an additional timing mechanism, independent of pattern structure, is operative in temporal pattern discrimination. All the results were replicated across levels of music training of the listeners.     

Comparison of two models of similarity judgment

The conventional multidimensional distance model of similarity judgment was compared with a new model in which component differences are weighted and then averaged. To evaluate the models, qualitative and quantitative predictions were derived from Romney and D'Andrade's (1964) componential analysis of American kinship terms, and these predictions were tested by having subjects rate the similarity (in experiment 1) and the difference (in experiment 2) between all possible pairs of 12 kinship terms. In both experiments, violations of qualitative predictions for both a simple distance model and a simple averaging model revealed that the componential analysis was not sufficient to account for the data. However the averaging model was able to account for the data when the dichotomous dimension of lineality used by Romney and D'Andrade was replaced by a continuous dimension of immediacy or closeness of kin. In contrast, no comparable elaboration under the distance model was successful. These results were discussed in terms of the likely psychological processes underlying similarity judgment.