Dominance of missing fundamental versus spectrally cued pitch: Individual differences for complex tones with unresolved harmonics

Abstract

In a two-alternative, forced-choice experiment, subjects had to compare the pitches of two sounds, A and B. Each sound was composed of four successive harmonics of a fundamental frequency between 100 to 250 Hz, added in cosine or Schröder phase. The harmonic frequencies of A were lower than those of B; the missing fundamental frequency of A was higher than that of B. The dominance of the missing fundamental versus the spectrally cued pitch--a pitch percept corresponding to spectral components--was measured as a function of nA, the lowest harmonic in A. The pitch percept is dominated by the missing fundamental if the harmonics are resolved (nA<7). If the harmonics become unresolved and are added in Schröder phase, the dominance shifts to a spectrally cued pitch (7<nA<13; 75% of the subjects). In the cosine phase condition, many subjects could detect the fundamental pitch well into the unresolved harmonic range (nA>20). For others, the transition was in the realm of partly resolved harmonics. This shows that the temporal envelope modulation of stimuli with only four unresolved harmonics can give a relatively clear fundamental pitch percept. However, this percept varies considerably among subjects.

Frequency discrimination of complex tones by hearing-impaired subjects: Evidence for loss of ability to use temporal fine structure

“…This meant that, when F0 was changed, spectral cues were available. Subjects might have based judgments on the frequency of the lowest or highest harmonic, or, when harmonics were unresolved, on shifts in the spectral center of gravity (or excitation pattern) of the stimuli (Moore and Moore, 2003a;Renken et al, 2004). Moore and Moore (2003a) showed that F0DLs for hearing-impaired subjects were often markedly larger when such spectral cues were eliminated than when they were present.…”

Tone sequences with conflicting fundamental pitch and timbre changes are heard differently by musicians and nonmusicians.

“…The strong contribution of auditory cortex suggests that fundamental pitch sensations might be subject to learning-induced neural plasticity. Indirect evidence for this assumption comes from psychoacoustic studies, which show that the perceived salience of the F0 does not depend only on the stimulus spectrum but also on the individual listener (Houtsma & Fleuren, 1991; Renken, Wiersinga-Post, Tomaskovic, & Duifhuis, 2004; Singh & Hirsh, 1992; Smoorenburg, 1970). Surprisingly, the authors of these studies did not address the reasons for the observed interindividual variations.…”

Effects of fundamental frequency removal and low-pass filtering on pitch comparisons.

“…Previous studies of effects of the missing fundamental have established that listeners often attribute manipulations that simultaneously produce changes in overall spectral envelope shape and spectral centroid to changes in pitch (Renken et al, 2004; Seither-Preisler et al, 2007; Vurma, Raju, & Kuuda, 2011). However, we believe this study is unique in directly equating spectral centroids across a tone pair, and comparing judgments of centroid-equated pairs to non-centroid-equated pairs.…”

“…As with the other interactions of timbre and pitch mentioned above, the degree to which listeners hear pitch as unchanged after the removal of F 0 reflects strong individual differences, and those differences have been found to correlate with musical training. Renken, Wiersinga-Post, Tomaskovic, and Duifhuis, (2004) found that the degree to which perceived pitch was influenced by the (missing) fundamental, rather than the spectral components of a tone, varied considerably across listeners. Furthermore, musically trained listeners are more likely to respond to the (missing) F 0 than are untrained listeners.…”