The influence of spectral composition of complex tones and of musical experience on the perceptibility of virtual pitch.

Abstract

Fifty-eight trained musicians and 58 naive listeners were instructed to adjust pure tones, generated by a computer-soundsampler system (ATARI MEGA/STE, AKAI S1100), to the perceived fundamental frequencies of alternatively presented harmonic complexes. Stimuli varied according to the number of their partials, the relative distance to the missing fundamental, and spectral density. Every person had to fulfill 112 different items. The degree of task difficulty was determined by the average of deviations of subjects’ performances from the greatest common submultiples of the complexes. It is shown that each of the considered variables has significant influence on fundamental frequency estimation. Moreover musicians tend to tune fundamentals to low (average: −17 Cent) whereas for nonmusicians the opposite trend is observed (average: +15 Cent). Results were related to performances on the subtests ‘‘Virtual/Spectral Test’’ [M. E. Albrecht, doctoral thesis (1972)] and ‘‘Interval-Classification’’ (Preisler, 1991) by a statistical ANOVA design. Interactions between performance scores are discussed with respect to their theoretical background. [Work supported by the Austrian Fonds for Scientific Research.]