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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1977

The assessment of pitch discrimination ability in young children.

This study tested the hypothesis that some tasks used in assessing pitch discrimination ability may instead by assessing children's ability to deal with relational language. Five tasks were given to 36 normal children who were equally divided into three age groups, six to six and one-half years, seven to seven and one-half years, and eight to eight and one-half years of age. Task 1 involved a training procedure to assess the children's ability to hear the differences in the pitch of two tones, which were an octave apart. A simple motor response was required. Task 2 assessed the children's ability to label these tones as high or low. Task 3 assessed their ability to compare two tones and label the second as higher or lower than the first. Task 4 examined their ability to label as high or low the position of a man on a ladder. Task 5 examined their ability to compare the positions of two men on two ladders and say whether the second man was higher or lower than the first. Results indicated that children who make pitch discriminations as demonstrated by nearly perfect scores on Task 1 often fail to demonstrate those discriminations on tasks requiring relational language. A comparison of Tasks 2 and 3 to Tasks 4 and 5 suggests that children in the age range studied are less proficient in applying high-low and higher-lower to pitch than to spatial relations.

Child↗
PubMed1978

Pitch and pitch discrimination of broadband signals with rippled power spectra.

A random-interval pulse train or wide-band noise when delayed (tau) and added back to itself (cos+) produces a stimulus with a consinusoidally varying (or trippled) power spectrum. The spacing between the peaks in the spectrum is equal to the reciprocal of the delay (1/tau). If the stimulus is delayed and added back at 180 degrees phase reversal (cos-), then a cosinusoidally varying power spectrum is generated whose spectral peaks are separated by 1/tau, but whose peaks are displaced by 1/2tau relative to the power spectrum of the cos+ stimulus generated with the same day, tau. These stimuli yield a pitch, such that the pitch of the cos+ stimulus is equal to approximately 1/tau and the pitches of the cos- stimuli are equal to approximately 0.9/tau and 1.1/tau. These pitch matching results were studied using a variety of matching stimuli and conditions. Following the identification of the pitches, a method of limits and a same-different procedure were used to study the pitch discriminability of both the cos+ and cos- stimuli. Delays (tau) ranging from 1 to 10 ms were studied covering a pitch range of 90-1100 Hz. The pitch discriminations associated with the cos+ and cos- stimuli were essentially the same for both the random-interval pulse train and the wide-band stimuli. These pitch-discrimination results are compared to those associated with a periodic pulse train. The research is also discussed in terms of discriminations of delayed sounds in reverberant environments. These are consistent with assumptions concerning the autocorrelation of the rippled stimuli within the dominant frequency region for pitch perception.

Acoustics↗
PubMed1992

Lateralization of phonetic and pitch discrimination in speech processing.

Cerebral activation was measured with positron emission tomography in ten human volunteers. The primary auditory cortex showed increased activity in response to noise bursts, whereas acoustically matched speech syllables activated secondary auditory cortices bilaterally. Instructions to make judgments about different attributes of the same speech signal resulted in activation of specific lateralized neural systems. Discrimination of phonetic structure led to increased activity in part of Broca's area of the left hemisphere, suggesting a role for articulatory recoding in phonetic perception. Processing changes in pitch produced activation of the right prefrontal cortex, consistent with the importance of right-hemisphere mechanisms in pitch perception.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1992

Pitch discrimination and phase sensitivity in young and elderly subjects and its relationship to frequency selectivity.

Frequency difference limens for pure tones (DLFs) and for complex tones (DLCs) were measured for four groups of subjects: young normal hearing, young hearing impaired, elderly with near-normal hearing, and elderly hearing impaired. The auditory filters of the subjects had been measured in earlier experiments using the notched-noise method, for center frequencies (fc) of 100, 200, 400, and 800 Hz. The DLFs for both impaired groups were higher than for the young normal group at all fc's (50-4000 Hz). The DLFs at a given fc were generally only weakly correlated with the sharpness of the auditory filter at that fc, and some subjects with broad filters had near-normal DLFs at low frequencies. Some subjects in the elderly normal group had very large DLFs at low frequencies in spite of near-normal auditory filters. These results suggest a partial dissociation of frequency selectivity and frequency discrimination of pure tones. The DLCs for the two impaired groups were higher than those for the young normal group at all fundamental frequencies (fo) tested (50, 100, 200, and 400 Hz); the DLCs for the elderly normal group were intermediate. At fo = 50 Hz, DLCs for a complex tone containing only low harmonics (1-5) were markedly higher than for complex tones containing higher harmonics, for all subject groups, suggesting that pitch was conveyed largely by the higher, unresolved harmonics. For the elderly impaired group, and some subjects in the elderly normal group, DLCs were larger for a complex tone with lower harmonics (1-12) than for tones without lower harmonics (4-12 and 6-12) for fo's up to 200 Hz. Some elderly normal subjects had markedly larger-than-normal DLCs in spite of near-normal auditory filters. The DLCs tended to be larger for complexes with components added in alternating sine/cosine phase than for complexes with components added in cosine phase. Phase effects were significant for all groups, but were small for the young normal group. The results are not consistent with place-based models of the pitch perception of complex tones; rather, they suggest that pitch is at least partly determined by temporal mechanisms.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Differential effects of congenital versus acquired unilateral brain injury on dichotic listening performance: evidence for sparing and asymmetric crowding.

We assessed dichotic speech and complex-pitch discrimination in nine young patients with unilateral left-hemisphere injury and eight young patients with unilateral right-hemisphere injury incurred in the pre-perinatal (congenital) period. As in adults with acquired unilateral lesions, both congenital lesion groups demonstrated poor performance on stimuli presented to the ear contralateral to the lesion. In overall performance on speech discrimination, however, the left-hemisphere congenital lesion group performed significantly better than the acquired-lesion group did. On complex-pitch discrimination, the right-hemisphere congenital lesion group performed significantly better than did the acquired-lesion group, but both left- and right-hemisphere congenital lesion groups were significantly worse at complex-pitch discrimination than were their age- and gender-matched normal controls. These results indicate that although congenital damage produces a "lesion effect" in dichotic listening similar to that after damage acquired in adulthood, overall function is relatively spared. To the extent that complex-pitch discrimination is affected by congenital damage to either hemisphere but speech discrimination is not, the present results are consistent with an asymmetric form of crowding during reorganization after congenital unilateral brain damage.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Differentiation of negative event-related potentials in an auditory discrimination task.

Several different negative potentials elicited in auditory perceptual tasks make spatially and temporally overlapping contributions to the scalp-recorded event-related potential. Frequent non-target tones in a 2-stimulus oddball pitch discrimination task, when compared with the same stimuli in ignore or simple reaction time conditions, elicit a negative deflection with two peaks (NA1 and NA2) differing in their latency and topography from the exogenous N92-P156 deflections. Oddball tones, when compared with the frequent ones, elicit mismatch negativity (MMN) in both ignore and discrimination conditions; MMN displays a frontocentral-posterolateral polarity inversion. In the discrimination condition, MMN is followed by N2 and P3b; the former has a more central amplitude maximum than MMN, and no posterolateral polarity inversion. When the pitch discrimination task was made more difficult, there was no effect on NA1 or NA2, but the latency of MMN, N2, P3b, and reaction time all increased in parallel. It is hypothesized that MMN reflects the outcome of an automatic mismatch detection process, and that the subsequent processing of targets is related to the event of mismatch detection.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Present status and future development of the cochlear prosthesis.

Presently devised single channel devices generate relatively primitive sensation of hearing. They provide some enhancement of communication skills for the totally deaf. Definite psychological advantages for the totally deaf have been observed. Pitch discrimination is by the mechanism of "periodicity pitch." No "place" pitch encoding is possible. The recognition of complex sounds is not possible. Multiple segments of auditory nerve must be stimulated in a manner which will stimulate the complex patterns of neural activity necessary for speech discrimination. Electrodes can be optimized and the pathophysiological consequences of electrical stimulation can be determined in experimental animals. The perceptual consequences of electrical stimulation, however, can best be determined in man himself. How much we will have to rely on known and future methods of aural rehabilitation will depend upon how well perceptual speech patterns can be generated by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve.

Animals↗
PubMed1976

Psychophysical judgment: electro-cortical and heart rate correlates of accuracy and uncertainty.

The relationship between perceptual accuracy and physiological response amplitude was investigated in an auditory pitch discrimination experiment. Confidence ratings were obtained from all subjects following each trial. The stimulus set consisted of three tones of different frequencies spaced in a manner to provide both easy and difficult discriminations. Heart rate, EEG and vertical eye movement were recorded throughout the experiment. The results of the experiment indicated that the largest evoked cardiac rate response was elicited by the stimulus which produced the fewest errors in judgment; larger auditory evoked potentials, particularly the late positive component (P300), were associated with the 'easy' stimulus; greater cortical negativity was associated with the difficult stimuli. Eye activity was found to covary with judgmental accuracy; cortical slow wave activity was particularly sensitive to the confidence, or 'uncertainty' parameter. A 'decision tree' model was hypothesized to describe the processing mechanism involved in solving the discrimination problem.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1989

Double disconnection effects resulting from infiltrating tumors.

Patients with left hemisphere lesions deep in parietal or parietal-occipital regions close to the lateral ventricles have been reported to have impaired performance on left ear speech stimuli in dichotic listening tests. This loss has been termed "paradoxical" because it presents at the ear ipsilateral to the lesion. Two patients with infiltrating tumors which involved the corpus callosum demonstrated that effect, but also demonstrated right ear extinction on a complex-pitch discrimination test that required right hemisphere processing. Since the side at which the impairment will be demonstrated depends upon the type of test used, the term "paradoxical extinction" does not clearly describe this phenomena. It is suggested that the so-called paradoxical loss is better referred to as callosal extinction.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Psychophysical pitch biases related to vowel quality, intensity difference, and sequential order.

This study investigates two types of psychophysical pitch bias, one related to vowel acoustical characteristics and the other to sequential order. Based on the analysis of the variation of the subjective equality of pitch in subjects' responses, a multivariate interaction model is used to explain the experimental results and also to demonstrate the existence of the two types of psychophysical pitch bias. The first pitch bias related to a vowel acoustical characteristic is due to the vowel quality difference as a pitch difference at equal fundamental frequency. By using /a/ as a common reference, this bias for three test vowels /e, i, u/ is found to be lower than /a/ by values of 0.54 1.25, and 2,80 Hz, respectively. The other pitch bias related to acoustical characteristic is due to the vowel intensity difference. With intensity difference ranges from 0 to 30 dB, the pitch shift (bias) does not exceed 0.2 Hz at a test F0 of 100 Hz. Apparently, an intensity difference produces insignificant pitch shift in vowel sounds. The pitch bias related to the sequential order of stimuli presentation is a --0.33-Hz bias, i.e., a trend of overestimating the pitch of the second sound in temporal pitch comparison. The pitch discriminability, i.e., the just noticeable difference (JND) at 75% threshold, in an environment with three acoustical parameters varing simultaneously is found to be 1.5%, about three times greater than the previously reported 0.5% DL when F0 varies alone. Finally, the psychophysical bias of vowel is also found to depend upon the power spectrum and negatively correlated to the magnitude of the F0 production discrepancies of the average vowel sounds.

Humans↗
PubMed1989

Regional cerebral blood flow correlates of a dichotic listening task.

This investigation was designed to test the hypothesis that ear advantage on a dichotic listening (DL) task of pitch discrimination reflects asymmetries in the metabolic activities of the temporal lobes. Fourteen normal subjects, with either a left-ear advantage (LEA) (n = 9) or a right-ear advantage (REA) (n = 5) on the DL task, underwent measurements of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during a resting baseline condition and during performance on the DL task. For both groups, the DL task was associated with selective and significant increases in rCBF to the contralateral posterior temporal lobe. Our finding of selective rCBF activation with dichotic stimulation may have potential implications for an understanding of the functional organization of the cerebral hemispheres.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1992

Muscle tension patterns during auditory attention.

Although there is much evidence demonstrating muscle tension changes during mental work, there are few data concerning muscle tension patterns during effortful attention to simple sensory stimuli. In the present study, sensory attention was evoked by a pitch discrimination task at three levels of difficulty, with a digit retention task administered for comparison. Twenty-four females each performed both tasks at all levels of difficulty, while the EKG, and the corrugator supercilii, frontalis, lip, jaw, chin, and forearm area EMG were recorded. As expected, heart rate decreased significantly with increasing difficulty of the pitch task. A pattern of facial EMG responses accompanied the pitch task, which included significant increases in corrugator and frontalis, and decreases in the jaw as a function of difficulty, and time within trials. The tension pattern observed during sensory intake is discussed in terms of its relation to emotional expressions and motor theories of attention.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1991

Some relationships between intelligence and auditory discrimination.

Some of the earliest scientific attempts to understand the nature of intelligence investigated differences in sensory discrimination and reaction time. There is once again interest in the relations between such simple abilities and intelligence, partly as a result of the application of information-processing paradigms to the study of intelligence. Correlations in the range of .3 to .8 have been reported between psychometric measures of intelligence and performance on simple cognitive, sensory, and motor tasks. The current study reports correlations between scores on a battery of auditory discrimination tasks and measures of intelligence and academic aptitude in two samples of college students. The correlations between the intellectual and academic aptitude measures and the total percent correct on the auditory battery ranged from 45 to 59. These results are consistent with recent findings of significant relationships between simple sensory, cognitive, and motor abilities and psychometric intelligence as well as with much earlier reports by Spearman (1904) and others of relationships between pitch discrimination and intelligence. An implication of these findings is that intelligence is a potential confounding variable in studies of the auditory perceptual abilities of various clinical populations.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed1992

Endogenous event-related potentials as indices of dementia in multiple sclerosis patients.

Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in a "double oddball" paradigm requiring an easy and a hard pitch discrimination from multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with and without dementia, and a group of age and sex matched normal subjects. Cognitive function was assessed by a short battery of neuropsychologic (NP) tests, and the two groups of MS patients were selected on the basis of substantial non-overlapping degrees of cognitive deficit in the demented as compared to the non-demented group. The N100, P200 and P300 ERP components were longer in latency in the demented patients, and the N100-P300 interval was prolonged as well, compared to the non-demented patients, whose ERP latencies did not differ from those of the normal subjects. Increased P300 latency was associated with poorer performance on the NP tests, especially those sensitive to impairment of learning and retrieval from memory. The reaction times of both patient groups were prolonged as compared to the controls, whereas the accuracy of the demented patients was significantly poorer than that of the non-demented patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Perception of timbral analogies.

Recent studies have investigated the structure of perceptual relations among musical instrument timbres by multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques. These studies have employed both acoustically produced tones and digitally synthesized imitations and hybrids of acoustic instrument tones. The analyses of dissimilarity ratings for all pairs of a set of tones are usually represented as geometrical structures in a two- or three-dimensional Euclidean space in which the shared 'perceptual' axes are shown to have a qualitative correspondence to acoustic properties such as spectral energy distribution, onset characteristics and degree of change in spectral distribution over the duration of the tone. The present study took as a point of departure a MDS analysis for complex, synthetic tones with the aim of testing whether musician and non-musician listeners used the relations defined by the perceptual space to perform an analogies task of the sort: timbre A is to timbre B as timbre C is to which of two possible timbres, D or D'? A parallelogram model was used to select the D timbres: if the relation between A and B is represented as a vector with both magnitude and direction components, then the appropriate D should form a vector with C having similar magnitude and direction in the timbre space. Aside from conceptual difficulties with the task for both non-musicians and composers, choices for both groups provide support for the parallelogram model indicating a capacity in listeners to perceive abstract relations among the timbres of complex sounds without specific training in such a task.

Acoustic Stimulation↗