Performance-based and subjective measures of perceptual organization in humans

Abstract

Measures of auditory perceptual organization in humans have traditionally relied on subjective reports from subjects. For instance, in alternating tone sequences, subjects might be asked to report whether they hear one or two streams. In order to investigate perceptual organization in non-human species, it can be useful to devise tests that are more objective, in that they have a right and a wrong answer and do not rely on introspection. Recent studies from our laboratory have employed various objective and subjective tasks to provide converging evidence in the search for the underlying principles of auditory perceptual organization. It is suggested that different tasks can bias potentially multi-stable percepts in one way or another, which in turn may be useful in uncovering neural correlates of perceptual organization that can vary even when the acoustic stimuli remain the same. [Work supported by NIH grant R01DC007657.]