Dominance region for pitch: Effects of duration and dichotic presentation

Abstract

The dominance region (DR) for pitch was determined for 16- and 200-ms complex tones containing the first seven harmonics of a fundamental frequency (F0) of 250 Hz. A tone was presented with one of the harmonics mistuned upwards or downwards by 3%, followed 500 ms later by a perfectly harmonic tone of the same duration. Listeners adjusted the F0 of the harmonic tone so that its pitch matched that of the mistuned complex. In experiment 1, stimuli were presented monaurally. The DR was significantly higher in harmonic number for the short than for the long duration. The overall sum of the pitch shifts produced by all harmonics was significantly larger for the short than for the long duration, presumably due to stronger perceptual fusion for the former. In experiment 2, the mistuned harmonic was presented only contralaterally to the remainder of the complex. A similar shift in the DR with duration was observed, although the pitch shifts were smaller than for monaural presentation. There was no significant effect of duration on the overall pitch shifts. The results are discussed in terms of pattern recognition and autocorrelation models of pitch perception, and a role of attention in pitch matching is suggested.