A previous study (Deutsch, 1991) demonstrated a striking difference in perception of the tritone paradox between subjects who had grown up in two different geographical regions. Specifically, a group of subjects who had grown up in California were compared with a group who had grown up in the South of England. When the Californian group tended to hear the pattern as ascending, the English group tended to hear it as descending, and vice versa. This raises the question of whether regional differences also exist within the United States in the way this pattern is perceived. The present study examined the percepts of subjects who had grown up in Mahoning and/or Trumbull counties in Ohio. Two groups were compared: those whose parents had also grown up in this area and those for whom this was not the case. A highly significant difference between these two groups of subjects was obtained, with those in the latter group producing a distribution of percepts similar to that found among Californians and those in the former group producing a different distribution. From this and other analyses of the data, it is concluded that regional differences in perception of the tritone paradox do indeed exist within the United States and that there is in addition an effect of familial background.

I describe and evaluate SuperLab LT (Chase & Abboud, 1990), a software package that enables students to replicate classic experiments in cognitive psychology. I also discuss the package with respect to its uses in teaching an undergraduate course in Experimental Psychology. Although the package has minor flaws, SuperLab LT provides numerous pedagogical benefits.

In the tritone paradox, listeners perceive octave-related complexes separated by tritones such that tones from one half of the pitch class circle are heard as higher in pitch and tones from the opposite half are heard as lower. It is theorized that listeners compare these tones to a pitch class template, which has an orientation with respect to height that differs among listeners, in making these relative height judgments. In the present experiment, listeners heard octave-related complexes presented one at a time (rather than in pairs), in addition to tone complexes separated by tritones. On the basis of the pitch-class-template theory, it was hypothesized that pitch class would have a similar influence on perceived height for both sets of stimuli and that perception of the single tones would correspond to perception of the tritone paradox. The results supported these hypotheses.

Shepard [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 36, 2346–2353 (1964)] has shown that ordered pairs of octave-related complexes are perceived in accordance with proximity. However, in his experiment, proximity-based judgments gradually decreased as intervals approached a tritone. With tritones, Deutsch [Music Percept. 8, 335–347 (1991)] found that listeners perceive half of the pitch-class circle as higher in pitch, and the opposite half as lower. The half heard as higher differs among subjects (the tritone paradox). Deutsch theorized that listeners compare these tritones to a circular pitch-class template, whose orientation with respect to height differs among listeners. The present study examines the perception of octave-related complexes that form intervals of P5/P4 or m3/M6. It was hypothesized that listeners may sometimes use a pitch-class template, rather than proximity, with intervals other than a tritone. Template orientations were determined using Deutsch’s paradigm. Subjects were presented with sequences of tones that traversed the circle of fifths. Perception of these tones was closely related to each subject’s pitch-class template, and not to proximity. Similar, though less pronounced, results were found in a second experiment using an ordered series of m3/M6.

A previous study [Deutsch, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, S1 (1990)] reported a striking difference in perception of the tritone paradox between subjects who had grown up in California and those who had grown in the South of England: When the Californians tended to hear the pattern as ascending the English group tended to hear it as descending, and vice versa. One of us (FR), who had grown up in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties in Ohio hears the pattern in a fashion typical of the southern English rather than the Californians. A study was therefore undertaken to examine perception of this pattern in subjects from this region. A statistically significant difference was found between those subject whose parents had also grown up in this region and those whose parents had not. The former group formed a bimodal distribution, and approximately half the subjects producing a histogram similar to that obtained from Californians and the others producing one similar to that obtained from the southern English. In contrast, those in the latter group produced a histogram uniformly similar to that obtained from Californians. This demonstrates regional differences in perception of this pattern, and also an effect of familial background.