Factors in the discrimination of tonal patterns. II. Selective attention and learning under various levels of stimulus uncertainty

Abstract

This is the second in a series of articles in human listeners’ abilities to discriminate between word‐length tonal sequences, or ’’patterns.’’ The first article reported that frequency resolution, by highly trained listeners, is four to five times more accurate for high‐frequency, late‐occurring components of such sequences than for low−frequency early components [Watson, Kelly, and Benbasset, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 57, 1175–1185 (l975)]. These effects, which are similar to described as ’’recognition masking’’ or ’’informational masking’’ by other authors, have now been shown to be strongly dependent on the degree of trial‐to‐trial stimulus uncertainty of the psychophysical procedure in which they are measured. When stimulus uncertainty is reduced to its psychophysical minimum, frequency resolution for any component of a tonal sequence is only slightly less accurate than for isolated tones. Previous reports of recognition masking this may reflect limitations imposed by those more dynamic parts of the sensory process concerned with memory and attention, rather than information loss in the more static peripheral auditory system. Subject Classification: [43]65.22, [43]65.75, [43]65.64, [43]65.58.