Categorical Perception in a Non-Linguistic Mode

Locke, Simeon; Kellar, Lucia

doi:10.1016/s0010-9452(73)80035-8

Cited by 118 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…For, as Dowling notes, this set typically contains from five to seven scale-step categories within each octave, as might be expected on the basis of Miller's (1956) well-known generalization concerning the limitation of the human capacity for categorical judgment to 7±2 categories. Moreover, a number of investigators have found evidence for categorical perception of musical pitches that is similar to that found for speech sounds (Burns & Ward, 1978;Locke & Kellar, 1973;Siegel & Siegel, 1977a, 1977bBlechner, Note 7;Halpern & Zatorre, Note 8).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context.

Krumhansl¹,

Shepard²

1979

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

292

363

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Listeners rated test tones falling in the octave range from middle to high C according to how well each completed a diatonic C major scale played in an adjacent octave just before the final test tone. Ratings were well explained in terms of three factors. The factors were distance in pitch height from the context tones, octave equivalence, and the following hierarchy of tonal functions : tonic tone, other tones of the major triad chord, other tones of the diatonic scale, and the nondiatonic tones. In these ratings, pitch height was more prominent for less musical listeners or with less musical (sinusoidal) tones, whereas octave equivalence and the tonal hierarchy prevailed for musical listeners, especially with harmonically richer tones. Ratings for quarter tones interpolated halfway between the halftone steps of the standard chromatic scale were approximately the averages of ratings for adjacent chromatic tones, suggesting failure to discriminate tones at this fine level of division.The study of perceived pitch and of the perceived relations between tones differing in pitch has generally been approached from one of two quite different traditions: the psychoacoustic and the musical. The psychoacoustic approach has typically focused on simple, physically specifiable properties of tones isolated from any musical contextproperties of frequency, separation in log frequency, or simplicity of integer ratios of frequencies. The results of such studies have provided some precise information about how the ear responds to isolated tones or tones in random sequences. We believe that they have been less informative with regard to how the listener perceives tones in organized musical sequences. Music theory suggests that the perception of such sequences may rely on the listener's sensitivity to different and structurally richer principles associated with tonal and diatonic organization. Such principles are useful in explaining the cognitive phenomena of reference point, motion, tension, and resolution that underlie the dynamic force of virtually all tonal music. They have, however, been subjected to relatively little systematic laboratory investigation or quantitative formulation.Background

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context.

Krumhansl¹,

Shepard²

1979

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

292

363

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“…An alternative formulation would hold that all dimensions perceived categorically in nonspeech sounds also are perceived categorically in speech sounds. Locke and Kellar's (1973) of risetime. Indeed, many other nonspeech stimuli may also be perceived categorically.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, several recent developments may require us to reexamine any claim about the distinctive nature of speech perception. Categorical perception has now been observed in a number of instances of nonspeech sounds (Cutting & Rosner, 1974;Cutting, Rosner, & Foard, in press;Locke & Kellar, 1973;Miller, Wier, Pastore, Kelly, & Dooling, 1976). In particular, Cutting and Rosner (1974) have reported categorical perception for nonspeech sounds varying in rise time.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

Jusczyk

Rosner

Cutting

et al. 1977

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…The reason for this is that many of the separate results had been (or have now been) obtained with stimuli other than speech. For example, categorical-like perception had been found for the perception of musical intervals (Locke & Kellar, 1973;Siegel & Siegel, 1977), for onsets of buzz-tone (Miller, Wier, Pastore, Kelly, & Dooling, 1976) and two-tone stimuli (Pisoni, 1977), for critical flicker fusion (Pastore, 1976), and for several others. Yet none of these stimuli had been shown to yield lefthemisphere effects, or asymmetric integrality.…”

Section: A Reassessment Of the Import Of Plucks And Bowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

Cutting

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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Cutting and Rosner (Perception & Psychophysics, 1974, 16, 564-570) reported that sawtooth wavetrains were perceived categorically when an array was varied in linear rise time increments. That is, rapid rise time stimuli were identified as plucked strings and slower rise time stimuli as bowed strings, and pluck-bow comparisons were relatively easy to discriminate but pluck-pluck and bow-bow comparisons were not. Such results indicate the general equivalence of identifica· tion and discrimination tasks. Rosen and Howell (Perception & Psychophysics, 1981, 30, 156-168), however, report that categorical perception does not occur for these sounds for two reasons. First, the original stimuli did not have the rise times reported by Cutting and Rosner. Second, the perception of these stimuli more closely follows a prediction from a Weber fraction. Acknowledging the first fact to be true, in part due to difficulties in digital·to-analog conver· sion, I set out to replicate and extend the results of Rosen and Howell. In Experiment I, I found that stimuli with equal linear increments of rise time are not perceived categorically; but they are not perceived to follow closely a logarithmic relation either. In Experiment 2, I found that stimuli with equal logarithmic increments of rise time were generally perceived categorically. Experiment 3 replicated the results of both experiments. Thus, plucked and bowed music-like sounds can sometimes be found to be perceived in a categorical manner. However, categorical perception is not found with stimuli generated in the manner of Cutting and Rosner (1974) or Rosen and Howell (1981), and the phenomenon generally seems subject to rather stringent, if not curious, stimulus conditions. Moreover, and more deeply, categorical perception seems hardly the bedrock phenomenon it once appeared to be, whether in speech or in any other domain.

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Categorical Perception in a Non-Linguistic Mode

Cited by 118 publications

References 30 publications

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context.

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context.

Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

Plucks and bows are categorically perceived, sometimes

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