Further examination of pitch discrimination interference between complex tones containing resolved harmonics

Gockel, Hedwig E. and Carlyon, Robert P. and Plack, Christopher J. (2009) Further examination of pitch discrimination interference between complex tones containing resolved harmonics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125 (2). pp. 1059-1066. ISSN 0001-4966

Abstract

Pitch discrimination interference (PDI) is an impairment in fundamental frequency (F0) discrimination between two sequentially presented complex (target) tones produced by another complex tone (he interferer) that is filtered into a remote spectral frequency region. Micheyl and Oxenham [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 1621-1631 (2007)] reported a modest PDI for target tones and interferers both containing resolved harmonics when the F0 difference between the two target tones (Delta F0) was small. When the interferer was in a lower spectral region than the target, a much larger PDI was observed when Delta F0 was large (14%-20%), and, under these conditions, performance in the presence of an interferer was worse than at smaller Delta F0s. The present study replicated the occurrence of PDI for complex tones containing resolved harmonics for small Delta F0s. In contrast to Micheyl and Oxenham's findings, performance in the presence of an interferer always increased monotonically with increasing Delta F0. However, when the interferer was in a lower spectral region than the target (and not vice versa), some subjects needed verbal instructions or modified stimuli to choose the correct cue, indicating an asymmetry in spontaneous obviousness of the correct listening cue across conditions.