Discrimination of interval size in short tone sequences

Abstract

This study investigates the discrimination of small changes of interval size in short sequences of musical tones. Major, minor and neutral thirds were varied in increments of 15 cents. The nine subjects had varying degrees of amateur musical experience-their level of musical training was lower than that of professional musicians. In some experiments the stimuli were presented purely melodically and in others they were presented together with a sustained tone at a higher pitch. Some subjects were able to make use of the additional cues from beats in the latter case. Category widths for identification were measured at around 70 cents and just-noticeable differences in frequency were measured at around 10 cents. Little significant variation of inter-stimulus sensitivity index d' was observed across the stimulus sets, i.e., there was little evidence for "anchors" or "landmarks" within the range of tunings employed. However, for major thirds, discrimination of the 15 cent increment between 400 and 415 cents was reduced compared to discrimination of other 15 cent increments within the stimulus sets.

The Effect of Instrumental Timbre on Interval Discrimination

“…These experiments included tasks such as interval categorization or discrimination of interval magnitudes at or around musically relevant intervals [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], correcting mistuned intervals [8], [9], and assessment of performance intonation [10], [11]. It is likely that the explicitly musical contexts of these experiments—in which the discrimination tasks were based on musically relevant intervals—may have given musicians a significant advantage over non-musicians.…”

Pitch-interval discrimination and musical expertise: Is the semitone a perceptual boundary?

“…Given the importance of processing pitch intervals, many researchers have examined pitch-interval discrimination extensively (for a comprehensive review, see Burns, 1999) in purely musical contexts, since, as one author noted, comparing pitch-interval sizes alone is an artificial task with no musical or ecological validity (Burns, 1999). These investigations of interval discrimination employed tasks of categorizing intervals according to Western musical labels and/ or interval discrimination around musically relevant intervals (Burns and Ward, 1978;Hill and Summers, 2007;Houtsma, 1968;Zatorre, 1983;Zatorre and Halpern, 1979), adjusting mistuned intervals (Rakowski, 1976;Ward, 1954), and analysis of performance intonation (Dowling, 1978;Ward, 1970). Given these musically relevant constraints, musicians should discriminate and categorize pitch intervals better than non-musicians.…”