Pitch Judgments for Repeated Bursts of Tone and Noise

Abstract

Recently much interest has been shown in the study of pitch judgments for complex auditory stimuli. In the present investigation five subjects were instructed to judge which of a pair of stimuli sounded higher in pitch. One stimulus, the standard, of every pair had a repetition rate of 200/sec; the variable stimulus had a repetition rate that ranged from 175/sec to 225/sec. Within a given pair the stimuli differed thus with respect to modulation rate; the signal to be modulated remained the same. The results of three experiments are reported: in two experiments the stimuli were bursts of 2000 cps tones having different rise times while the third experiment involved bursts of wide-band noise. For repetition rates in the vicinity of 200/sec the difference limen for burst rate is smaller for bursts containing tonal stimuli than for bursts of wide-band noise. These data are discussed in relation to the findings of Miller and Taylor, Small, DeBoer, and Mowbray et al. [This work was supported in part by the U. S. Army (Signal Corps), the U. S. Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development Command), and the U. S. Navy (Office of Naval Research)].