Iterated rippled noise discrimination at long durations

Abstract

Iterated rippled noise (IRN) was used to study discrimination of IRN stimuli with a lower number of iterations from IRN stimuli with a higher number of iterations as a function of stimulus duration (100-2000 ms). Such IRN stimuli differ in the strength of the repetition pitch. In some cases, the gain used to generate IRN stimuli was adjusted so that both IRN stimuli in the discrimination task had the same height of the first peak in the autocorrelation function or autocorrelogram. In previous work involving short-duration IRN stimuli (<500 ms), listeners were not able to discriminate between IRN stimuli that had different numbers of iterations but the same height of the first peak in the autocorrelation function. In the current study, IRN discrimination performance improved with increases in duration, even in cases when the height of the first peak in the autocorrelation was the same for the two IRN stimuli. Thus, future studies involving discrimination of IRN stimuli may need to use longer durations (1 s or greater) than those that have been used in the past.