Temporal expectancies affect accuracy in standard-comparison judgments of duration, but neither pitch height, nor timbre, nor loudness.

Abstract

Presenting a stimulus at the most expected point in time should benefit its perceptual processing (Jones, 1976; Large & Jones, 1999). For example, accuracy decreases when comparing the pitch of two tones separated by a sequence of temporally regular distractors if the final tone is shifted away from the expected time (Jones, Moynihan, MacKenzie, & Puente, 2002). However, recent research could not replicate this effect (Bauer, Jaeger, Thorne, Bendixen, & Debener, 2015), so we explored possible explanations. First, we varied the size and probability of timing shifts of the comparison tone in 7 experimental combinations (N = 16 in each). Second, we strengthened temporal expectancies by using a rhythmically rich distractor sequence, either repeating the standard tone at the end of the sequence (N = 26) or not (N = 28). Third, we had listeners compare either the timbre (N = 55) or the loudness (N = 24) instead of pitch. No effects of temporal expectancy (nor interactions with musical training) emerged in these experiments; however, they did occur when participants judged the relative duration of time intervals (N = 38). That is, a temporal expectancy profile was only observable in the context of a temporal task, and did not generalize to other domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).