Duration of Perceived and Performed Sounds

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a study on the perception and reproduction of sound durations. First, the duration discrimination abilities of musician and non-musician subjects were measured. An experiment was then carried out to find the effect of frequency difference on duration discrimination in pairs of pure tones (musical note durations). Finally, three experiments were undertaken to investigate any effect of frequency difference on the performed duration of tones. The major findings were: (i) that musicians show lower discrimination thresholds than non-musicians for short stimuli durations (25-100 msec), (ii) that higher frequencies are perceived as being longer in duration than lower frequencies, and (iii) that when the performed sound should be double or longer than a presented tone, subjects typically perform the sound longer than is appropriate.