Citation

Lake JI, Labar KS, Meck WH. Acta Psychol. 2014; 149: 169-177.

Affiliation

Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and Genomics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Electronic address: meck@psych.duke.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.03.010

PMID

24746941

Abstract

Variations in both pitch and time are important in conveying meaning through speech and music, however, research is scant on perceptual interactions between these two domains. Using an ordinal comparison procedure, we explored how different pitch levels of flanker tones influenced the perceived duration of empty interstimulus intervals (ISIs). Participants heard monotonic, isochronous tone sequences (ISIs of 300, 600, or 1200ms) composed of either one or five standard ISIs flanked by 500Hz tones, followed by a final interval (FI) flanked by tones of either the same (500Hz), higher (625Hz), or lower (400Hz) pitch. The FI varied in duration around the standard ISI duration. Participants were asked to determine if the FI was longer or shorter in duration than the preceding intervals. We found that an increase in FI flanker tone pitch level led to the underestimation of FI durations while a decrease in FI flanker tone pitch led to the overestimation of FI durations. The magnitude of these pitch-level effects decreased as the duration of the standard interval was increased, suggesting that the effect was driven by differences in mode-switch latencies to start/stop timing. Temporal context (One vs. Five Standard ISIs) did not have a consistent effect on performance. We propose that the interaction between pitch and time may have important consequences in understanding the ways in which meaning and emotion are communicated.

Language: en