Past work has shown varying degrees of relationship between pitch and rhythm perception. Current work investigated the relationship between pitch and rhythm processing in a four-tone sequence-reconstruction task which places additional demands on short-term memory. Sequence tones either had a fixed duration (212 ms) with frequency randomly selected from a logarithmically scaled distribution (400–1750 Hz), a fixed frequency (837 Hz) with a randomly selected log scaled duration (75–600 ms), or a random frequency and duration. In initial conditions, the task was to assemble sequence elements to recreate the target sequence for each of the three sequence types. To evaluate effect of extraneous randomization, both frequency and duration were randomized in the final two conditions with only one of the two attributes defining the target sequence. When only one stimulus attribute was randomized, performance was significantly better with sequences defined by pitch rather than rhythmic variation. Combining pitch and rhythmic variations led to a slight improvement in performance, while the introduction of extraneous variation had little to no effect when either pitch or rhythm defined the target sequence. Overall, there was a wide performance range across listeners with listeners clustered primarily by ability to use pitch information. [Work supported by NIH.]

Experience and training can influence discrimination of tonal sequences. Current work investigated pitch and rhythm processing of four-tone sequences by audiology and speech students, audio-arts students experienced in critical listening, and trained musicians. Sequence tones either had a fixed duration (212 ms) with frequency randomly selected from a logarithmically scaled distribution (400–1750 Hz), a fixed frequency (837 Hz) with a randomly selected log scaled duration (75–600 ms), or a random frequency and duration. In initial conditions, the task was to assemble sequence elements to recreate the target sequence for each of the three sequence types. To evaluate effect of extraneous randomization, both frequency and duration were randomized in the final two conditions with only one of the two attributes defining the target sequence. Audio-arts students performed significantly better than audiology and speech students in the reconstruction task. In conditions involving joint processing of sequence pitch contour and rhythm, the performance of audio-arts students was well approximated by the optimal combination of uncorrelated but integral stimulus dimensions. Ongoing work is evaluating the performance of trained musicians in the sequence-reconstruction task, with emphasis on manner in which information is combined across the dimensions of sequence pitch and rhythm. [Work supported by NIH.]

Recognition of individual words is frequently used to investigate speech intelligibility and underlying perceptual processing. Traditionally, the majority of such studies in English have utilized monosyllabic and, on occasion, disyllabic words and spondees. Although multisyllabic words have been used extensively to investigate visual processing and lexical organization in reading, little research exists on the auditory perception of spoken multisyllabic English words. The present database was designed to provide materials to facilitate further research into the intelligibility and perceptual processing of spoken multisyllabic words. The database consists of five sections of 1–5 syllable words each. Individual words in each section were generated from the English Lexicon Project website. All words in the database were recorded by a male native speaker of American English, separated into individual word audio files and equalized in root-mean-square energy. Each syllable section contains 1125 words that vary in duration, frequency of occurrence and phonological neighborhood density. With a large number of words in each syllable section, shorter word lists can be selected from each section and matched on specific lexical characteristics. The database recordings are available free of charge for research purposes to improve understanding of perceptual processing of multisyllabic words.