Duplex perception with musical stimuli: A further investigation

Abstract

Duplex perception, the simultaneous perception of a single stimulus in two phenomenologically distinct modes, was first observed, using musical stimuli, by Pastore et al. (1983). The present paper reports a two-part experiment designed to replicate and extend Pastore et al.'s study. Twenty subjects participated in both parts, the first of which was a modified replication of Pastore et al.'s Experiment 1, and the second of which was an extended replication in which the onset time of target notes was manipulated. As expected, in both parts of the study duplex perception was observed only when subjects were making musical judgments of dichotic stimuli; however, in the second part of the study, the prediction that duplex perception would be more likely to occur when target notes were on time as opposed to early or late was not supported. The overall incidence of duplex perception was lower than that reported by Pastore et al. Possible reasons for this discrepancy in findings are discussed.Duplex perception, the simultaneous perception of a single stimulus in two phenomenologically distinct modes, was first observed by Rand (1974), using synthetic speech stimuli. The phenomenon occurs when a single formant transition, or a pair of transitions, is isolated and presented to one ear, while the remainder of the syllable is presented to the other ear. Listeners report hearing a nonspeech "chirp" in the ear to which the isolated transition(s) was (were) presented and, simultaneously, the reconstituted syllable in the other ear. The perceived identity of the syllable-consonant depends on the contralateral formant transition.Mann, Madden, Russell, and Liberman (1981) applied this method to determine how a time-varying formant transition was integrated into the perception of a stop consonant. They observed that the reconstituted speech percept observed by their subjects seemed no different from the one that would have been produced had the base and isolated transitions been electronically mixed and presented in the normal manner. At the same time, their subjects perceived a nonspeech "chirp" not perceptibly different from what they would have perceived had the transition been presented in isolation. Isenberg and Liberman (1978) used only the F3 transition as the isolated cue, so that the remainder, all of the first and second formants, would be full and speech-like. The results indicated that this arrangement did make it relatively easy to obtain the duplex percept.There has since been much research using the duplex paradigm (e.g., Isenberg & Liberman, 1978; The author is grateful to Ian Christensen, Andrew Gregory, Tony Manstead, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.The author's mailing address is: Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, England.

Within-category discrimination of musical chords: Perceptual magnet or anchor?

“…Since categorical perception results for chords should be roughly equivalent to that reported for vowels (Collins, 1985;Pastore et al, 1983), why did we not find a similar perceptual magnet effect in the present study? This one, apparently simple, question raises many issues.…”

Evidence for auditory feature integration with spatially distributed items

“…In one condition, the tone that distinguished a specific major chord from its corresponding minor chord (E and H, respectively) was presented to one ear, with the remainder ofthe chord (e.g., C-G, C-G-A, C-G-B-D) being presented to the other ear. This dichotic condition resulted in the frequent perceptual fusion ofthe separate stimuli to create a major or a minor chord, as had been reported in earlier studies of musical duplex perception (e.g., Collins, 1985;Hall & Pastore, 1992b;Pastore, Schrnuckler, Rosenblum, & Szczesiul, 1983). In another condition, the E and H stimuli were presented simultaneously, but to separate ears, with one tone presented in isolation and the other mixed with the remainder of the chord.…”

“…Likewise, several laboratory-based phenomena reflect the mislocal-ization ofproperties and thus could be interpreted as examples ofthe illusory integration ofsimultaneously presented auditory features. For speech and music, these phenomena include fusion (Cutting, 1976), duplex perception (e.g., Collins, 1985;Hall & Pastore, 1992b;Mattingly & Liberman, 1988;Pastore et aI., 1983;Whalen & Liberman, 1987), and the related streaming phenomenon (Ciocca & Bregman, 1989). Examples specific to music include Deutsch's octave (e.g., 1974) andscale (1975) illusions.…”

Psychophysics of Complex Auditory and Speech Stimuli

“…the cailoilated prulslilihtcs for migrating contraliteral distinguishing ttuic% fusing I-q Sa) is a iunction of increa•ing complexity were -13. (2. and 5 ;9 for the A stimultus, and .16 (.0(u. and Collins (1985) found a reduced rate of musical DP when contralateral components were asynchronous by 125 ins, whereas smaller asynchronies between chirp and base in DPS result in segregation (Cutting, 1976). The Collins findings could be argued to reflect the reliance on different integration cues in musical and speech DP.…”

“…Method Some of the current methods were motivated by DP findings. Although used in previous musical DP demonstrations (Pastore, et al, 1983;Collins, 1985). major/minor chord labelling performance is not equally good across subjects, even when the subjects are musicians.…”