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Results for “Pitch Perception”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1985

Relationship between expressive language ability and rhythm perception, pitch perception, vocal range, and vocal midpoint among mentally retarded adults.

This study investigated the relationship between expressive language ability and rhythm perception, pitch perception, vocal range, and vocal midpoint for 28 mentally retarded adults. A standardized speech test determined language scores, a standardized music test assessed rhythm and pitch perception, and vocalization determined vocal range and midpoint. Multiple correlation and multiple linear regression analyses indicated a significant correlation between expressive language ability and rhythm perception. Further research with music tests more appropriate for mentally retarded adults is recommended.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Contributions of temporal and place cues in pitch perception in absolute pitch possessors.

Pitch perception is determined by both place and temporal cues. To explore whether the manner in which these cues are used differs depending on absolute pitch capability, pitch identification experiments with and without pitch references were conducted for subjects with different absolute pitch capabilities and musical experience. Three types of stimuli were used to manipulate place and temporal cues separately: narrowband noises, which provide strong place cues but less salient temporal cues; iterated rippled noises, which provide strong temporal cues but less salient place cues; and sinusoidal tones, which provide both. The results indicated that absolute pitch possessors utilize temporal cues more effectively when they identify musical chroma With regard to the judgment of height, it was indicated that place cues play an important role for both absolute and nonabsolute pitch possessors.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Sensory and nonsensory influences on children's performance of dichotic pitch perception tasks.

Dichotic pitch perception reflects the auditory system's use of binaural cues to perceptually separate different sound sources and to determine the spatial location of sounds. Several studies were conducted to identify factors that influence children's dichotic pitch perception thresholds. An initial study of school children revealed an age-related improvement in thresholds for lateralizing dichotic pitch tones. In subsequent studies potential sensory and nonsensory limitations on young children's performance of dichotic pitch lateralization tasks were examined. A training study showed that with sufficient practice, young children lateralize dichotic pitch stimuli as well as adults, indicating an age difference in perceptual learning of the lateralization task. Changing the task requirements so that young children made a judgment about the pitch of dichotic pitch tones, rather than the spatial location of the tones, also resulted in significantly better thresholds. These findings indicate that nonsensory factors limit young children's performance of dichotic pitch tasks.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Grouping in pitch perception: evidence for sequential constraints.

Evidence is presented that sequential auditory grouping constraints apply to the perception of pitch. Experiment 1 shows that the pitch changes produced by mistuning the fourth harmonic of a 90-ms 12-harmonic 155-Hz fundamental complex tone are substantially reduced when the complex is preceded by four 90-ms tones at the same frequency as the mistuned component. Both the pitch changes and their reduction by the tonal sequence precursor remain when the mistuned component and the precursor are presented contralateral to the remaining components. Experiment 2 shows that reducing the level of the same mistuned component reduces the size of the pitch change, but only if the mistuned component is presented ipsilaterally. To the extent that adaptation can be equated with a physical reduction in level, this result provides further evidence against peripheral adaptation playing a significant role in the auditory grouping of harmonics in pitch perception.

Functional Laterality↗
PubMed1995

A spectral network model of pitch perception.

A model of pitch perception, called the spatial pitch network or SPINET model, is developed and analyzed. The model neurally instantiates ideas from the spectral pitch modeling literature and joins them to basic neural network signal processing designs to stimulate a broader range of perceptual pitch data than previous spectral models. The components of the model are interpreted as peripheral mechanical and neural processing stages, which are capable of being incorporated into a larger network architecture for separating multiple sound sources in the environment. The core of the new model transforms a spectral representation of an acoustic source into a spatial distribution of pitch strengths. The SPINET model uses a weighted "harmonic sieve" whereby the strength of activation of a given pitch depends upon a weighted sum of narrow regions around the harmonics of the nominal pitch value, and higher harmonics contribute less to a pitch than lower ones. Suitably chosen harmonic weighting functions enable computer simulations of pitch perception data involving mistuned components, shifted harmonics, and various types of continuous spectra including rippled noise. It is shown how the weighting functions produce the dominance region, how they lead to octave shifts of pitch in response to ambiguous stimuli, and how they lead to a pitch region in response to the octave-spaced Shepard tone complexes and Deutsch tritones without the use of attentional mechanisms to limit pitch choices. An on-center off-surround network in the model helps to produce noise suppression, partial masking, and edge pitch. Finally, it is shown how peripheral filtering and short-term energy measurements produce a model pitch estimate that is sensitive to certain component phase relationships.

Cochlea↗
PubMed2005

Dead regions and pitch perception.

The perception of pitch for pure tones with frequencies falling inside low- or high-frequency dead regions (DRs) was examined. Subjects adjusted a variable-frequency tone to match the pitch of a fixed tone. Matches within one ear were often erratic for tones falling in a DR, indicating unclear pitch percepts. Matches across ears of subjects with asymmetric hearing loss, and octave matches within ears, indicated that tones falling within a DR were perceived with an unclear pitch and/or a pitch different from "normal" whenever the tones fell more than 0.5 octave within a low- or high-frequency DR. One unilaterally impaired subject, with only a small surviving region between 3 and 4 kHz, matched a fixed 0.5-kHz tone in his impaired ear with, on average, a 3.75-kHz tone in his better ear. When asked to match the 0.5-kHz tone with an amplitude-modulated tone, he adjusted the carrier and modulation frequencies to about 3.8 and 0.5 kHz, respectively, suggesting that some temporal information was still available. Overall, the results indicate that the pitch of low-frequency tones is not conveyed solely by a temporal code. Possibly, there needs to be a correspondence between place and temporal information for a normal pitch to be perceived.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1998

A dual mechanism for sound pitch perception: new evidence from brain electrophysiology.

The N1 component of the auditory brain evoked potential was used as a direct electrophysiological index, to study how the perception of pitch for complex periodic tones can be influenced by the phase of the harmonics that make up a sound, according to their ranks. Results showed that in the low pitch and/or high spectra region, N1 latency was modified by phase, whereas it was not in the high pitch and low spectra region. These data help bring evidence towards a dual mechanism for pitch perception, and demonstrate that these processes take place within 110 ms following stimulus onset. Results are compatible with a model based on the resolvability of components and on the bandwidth of auditory filters.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1985

Infant pitch perception: evidence for responding to pitch categories and the missing fundamental.

While numerous studies on infant perception have demonstrated the infant's ability to discriminate sounds having different frequencies, little research has evaluated more sophisticated pitch perception abilities such as perceptual constancy and perception of the missing fundamental. In the present study 7-8-month-old infants demonstrated the ability to discriminate harmonic complexes from two pitch categories that differed in pitch by approximately 20% (e.g., 160 vs 200 Hz). Using a visually reinforced conditioned head-turning paradigm, a number of spectrally different tonal complexes that contained varying harmonic components but signaled the same two pitch categories were presented. After learning the basic pitch discrimination, the same infants learned to categorize spectrally different tonal complexes according to the pitches signaled by their fundamental frequencies. That is, the infants showed evidence of perceptual constancy for the pitch of harmonic complexes. Finally, infants heard tonal complexes that signaled the same pitch categories but for which the fundamental frequency was removed. Infants were still able to categorize the harmonic complexes according to their pitch categories. These results suggest that by 7 months of age infants show fairly sophisticated pitch perception abilities similar to those demonstrated by adults.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1994

Pitch perception in patients with a multi-channel cochlear implant using various pulses width.

Cochlear implants have been designed to partially restore hearing to those people who are totally deaf. Multi-channel cochlear implants offer the opportunity to evoke acoustic perceptions like loudness and pitch, elicited by a controllable pattern of electric stimulation by means of electrodes placed in different places along the cochlear length. In this study, two psychophysical experiments were conducted with 4 patients, 1 prelingually and 3 postlingually-deafened, implanted with the multi-channel cochlear prosthesis Nucleus 22. Experiments were carried out to study the effect of varying the width of the electric biphasic pulsatile stimuli on the discriminative abilities of the pitch perception. The tests involved place pitch ranking and pulse rate discrimination. Place pitch ranking was studied by determining the just noticeable difference in pitch pairs (jnd-pp), defined as the pair of nearest electrodes which elicit different pitch perception. Pulse rate discrimination was studied by determining the just noticeable difference in pulse rate (jnd-pr) defined as the minimal difference in stimulus repetition rate over a given electrode, which elicits different pitch perceptions. Both experiments were conducted using pulses of 400, 200, 100 and 50 microseconds/phase. The results indicated that in spite of the differences in pathologies and personal histories, both jnd-pp and jnd-pr decrease by diminishing the pulse width. Speech perceptual data, measured for various pulse widths, validates the usefulness of decreased pulse width which yields favorable results in the psychophysical tests.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1997

A unitary model of pitch perception.

A model of the mechanism of residue pitch perception is revisited. It is evaluated in the context of some new empirical results, and it is proposed that the model is able to reconcile a number of differing approaches in the history of theories of pitch perception. The model consists of four sequential processing stages: peripheral frequency selectivity, within-channel half-wave rectification and low-pass filtering, within-channel periodicity extraction, and cross-channel aggregation of the output. The pitch percept is represented by the aggregated periodicity function. Using autocorrelation as the periodicity extraction method and the summary autocorrelation function (SACF) as the method for representing pitch information, it is shown that the model can simulate new experimental results that show how the quality of the pitch percept is influenced by the resolvability of the harmonic components of the stimulus complex. These include: (i) the pitch of harmonic stimuli whose components alternate in phase; (ii) the increased frequency difference limen of tones consisting of higher harmonics; and (iii) the influence of a mistuned harmonic on the pitch of the complex as a function of its harmonic number. To accommodate these paradigms, it was necessary to compare stimuli along the length of the SACF rather than relying upon the highest peak alone. These new results demonstrate that the model responds differently to complexes consisting of low and high harmonics. As a consequence, it is not necessary to postulate two separate mechanisms to explain different pitch percepts associated with resolved and unresolved harmonics.

Hair Cells, Auditory, Inner↗
PubMed2001

Pitch perception shift: a rare side-effect of carbamazepine.

Carbamazepine-induced pitch perception shifts have rarely been described. Two cases of shifted pitch perception developing during medication with carbamazepine are described. Case 1 possessed absolute pitch. Her pitch perception shift disappeared with the discontinuance of carbamazepine. Case 2 did not have absolute pitch. Even though he experienced a pitch perception shift, he developed a tolerance to the shift. We concluded that carbamazepine was the cause of the pitch perception shift in the first case, while the second case probably became attuned to the change in pitch perception because he did not possess absolute pitch.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Cancellation model of pitch perception.

A model of pitch perception is presented involving an array of delay lines and inhibitory gating neurons. In response to a periodic sound, a minimum appears in the pattern of outputs of the inhibitory neurons at a lag equal to the period of the sound. The position of this minimum is the cue to pitch. The model is similar to the autocorrelation model of pitch, multiplication being replaced by an operation similar to subtraction, and maxima by minima. The two models account for a wide class of pitch phenomena in very much the same way. The principal goal of this paper is to demonstrate this fact. Several features of the cancellation model may be to its advantage: it is closely related to the operation of harmonic cancellation that can account for segregation of concurrent harmonic stimuli, it can be generalized to explain the perception of multiple pitches, and it shows a greater degree of sensitivity to phase than autocorrelation, which may allow it to explain certain phenomena that autocorrelation cannot account for.

Humans↗
PubMed2005

Structural and functional asymmetry of lateral Heschl's gyrus reflects pitch perception preference.

The relative pitch of harmonic complex sounds, such as instrumental sounds, may be perceived by decoding either the fundamental pitch (f0) or the spectral pitch (fSP) of the stimuli. We classified a large cohort of 420 subjects including symphony orchestra musicians to be either f0 or fSP listeners, depending on the dominant perceptual mode. In a subgroup of 87 subjects, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and magnetoencephalography studies demonstrated a strong neural basis for both types of pitch perception irrespective of musical aptitude. Compared with f0 listeners, fSP listeners possessed a pronounced rightward, rather than leftward, asymmetry of gray matter volume and P50m activity within the pitch-sensitive lateral Heschl's gyrus. Our data link relative hemispheric lateralization with perceptual stimulus properties, whereas the absolute size of the Heschl's gyrus depends on musical aptitude.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1999

A comparison of monotic and dichotic complex-tone pitch perception in listeners with hearing loss.

The perception of fundamental pitch for two-harmonic complex tones was examined in musically experienced listeners with cochlear-based high-frequency hearing loss. Performance in a musical interval identification task was measured as a function of the average rank of the lowest harmonic for both monotic and dichotic presentation of the harmonics at 14 dB Sensation Level. Listeners with hearing loss demonstrated excellent musical interval identification at low fundamental frequencies and low harmonic numbers, but abnormally poor identification at higher fundamental frequencies and higher average ranks. The upper frequency limit of performance in the listeners with hearing loss was similar in both monotic and dichotic conditions. These results suggest that something other than frequency resolution per se limits complex-tone pitch perception in listeners with hearing loss.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Correct tonotopic representation is necessary for complex pitch perception.

The ability to extract a pitch from complex harmonic sounds, such as human speech, animal vocalizations, and musical instruments, is a fundamental attribute of hearing. Some theories of pitch rely on the frequency-to-place mapping, or tonotopy, in the inner ear (cochlea), but most current models are based solely on the relative timing of spikes in the auditory nerve. So far, it has proved to be difficult to distinguish between these two possible representations, primarily because temporal and place information usually covary in the cochlea. In this study, "transposed stimuli" were used to dissociate temporal from place information. By presenting the temporal information of low-frequency sinusoids to locations in the cochlea tuned to high frequencies, we found that human subjects displayed poor pitch perception for single tones. More importantly, none of the subjects was able to extract the fundamental frequency from multiple low-frequency harmonics presented to high-frequency regions of the cochlea. The experiments demonstrate that tonotopic representation is crucial to complex pitch perception and provide a new tool in the search for the neural basis of pitch.

Cochlear Implants↗
PubMed1987

Pitch perception by cochlear implant subjects.

Direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve can be used to restore some degree of hearing to the profoundly deaf. Percepts due to electrical stimulation have characteristics corresponding approximately to the acoustic percepts of loudness, pitch, and timbre. To encode speech as a pattern of electrical stimulation, it is necessary to determine the effects of the stimulus parameters on these percepts. The effects of the three basic stimulus parameters of level, repetition rate, and stimulation location on subjects' percepts were examined. Pitch difference limens arising from changes in rate of stimulation increase as the stimulating rate increases, up to a saturation point of between 200 and 1000 pulses per second. Changes in pitch due to electrode selection depend upon the subject, but generally agree with a tonotopic organization of the human cochlea. Further, the discriminability of such place-pitch percepts seems to be dependent on the degree of current spread in the cochlea. The effect of stimulus level on perceived pitch is significant but is highly dependent on the individual tested. The results of these experiments are discussed in terms of their impact on speech-processing strategies and their relevance to acoustic pitch perception.

Acoustic Stimulation↗