The tendency to hear a sequence of alternating low (L) and high (H) frequency tones as two streams can be increased by a preceding induction sequence, even one composed only of same-frequency tones. Four experiments used such an induction sequence (10 identical L tones) to promote segregation in a shorter test sequence comprising L and H tones. Previous studies have shown that the build-up of stream segregation is usually reduced greatly when a sudden change in acoustic properties distinguishes all of the induction tones from their test-sequence counterparts. Experiment 1 showed that a single deviant tone, created by altering the final inducer (in frequency, level, duration, or replacement with silence) reduced reported segregation, often substantially. Experiment 2 partially replicated this finding, using changes in temporal discrimination as a measure of streaming. Experiments 3 and 4 varied the size of a frequency change applied to the deviant tone; the extent of resetting varied with size only gradually. The results suggest that resetting begins to occur once the change is large enough to be noticeable. Since the prior inducers always remained unaltered in the deviant-tone conditions, it is proposed that a single change actively resets the build-up evoked by the induction sequence.
REFERENCES
1.
Anstis
, S.
, and Saida
, S.
(1985
). “Adaptation to auditory streaming of frequency-modulated tones
,” J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
11
, 257
–271
.2.
Beauvois
, M. W.
, and Meddis
, R.
(1997
). “Time decay of auditory stream biasing
,” Percept. Psychophys.
59
, 81
–86
.3.
Boehnke
, S. E.
, and Phillips
, D. P.
(2005
). “The relation between auditory temporal interval processing and sequential stream segregation examined with stimulus laterality differences
,” Percept. Psychophys.
67
, 1088
–1101
.4.
Bregman
, A. S.
(1978
). “Auditory streaming is cumulative
,” J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
4
, 380
–387
.5.
Bregman
, A. S.
(1990
). Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound
(MIT
, Cambridge, MA
).6.
Bregman
, A. S.
, and Campbell
, J.
(1971
). “Primary auditory stream segregation and perception of order in rapid sequences of tones
,” J. Exp. Psychol.
89
, 244
–249
.7.
Carlyon
, R. P.
, Cusack
, R.
, Foxton
, J. M.
, and Robertson
, I. H.
(2001
). “Effects of attention and unilateral neglect on auditory stream segregation
,” J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
27
, 115
–127
.8.
Carlyon
, R. P.
, Plack
, C. J.
, Fantini
, D. A.
, and Cusack
, R.
(2003
). “Cross-modal and non-sensory influences on auditory streaming
,” Perception
32
, 1393
–1402
.9.
Cooper
, H. R.
, and Roberts
, B.
(2009
). “Auditory stream segregation in cochlear implant listeners: Measures based on temporal discrimination and interleaved melody recognition
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
126
, 1975
–1987
.10.
Cusack
, R.
, Deeks
, J.
, Aikman
, G.
, and Carlyon
, R. P.
(2004
). “Effects of location, frequency region, and time course of selective attention on auditory scene analysis
,” J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
30
, 643
–656
.11.
Cusack
, R.
, and Roberts
, B.
(2000
). “Effects of differences in timbre on sequential grouping
,” Percept. Psychophys.
62
, 1112
–1120
.12.
Glasberg
, B. R.
, and Moore
, B. C. J.
(1990
). “Derivation of auditory filter shapes from notched-noise data
,” Hear. Res.
47
, 103
–138
.13.
Haywood
, N. R.
(2009
). “Build-up and resetting of auditory stream segregation in quiet and in complex-tone backgrounds
,” Ph.D. thesis, Aston University
, Birmingham, United Kingdom.14.
Henke
, W. L.
(1997
). “MITSYN: A coherent family of high-level languages for time signal processing, software package, version 11.01
,” Belmont, MA, http://home.earthlink.net/~mitsyn (Last viewed 4/30/10).15.
Levitt
, H.
(1971
). “Transformed up-down methods in psychoacoustics
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
49
, 467
–477
.16.
Miller
, G. A.
, and Heise
, G. A.
(1950
). “The trill threshold
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
22
, 637
–638
.17.
Moore
, B. C. J.
(2003
). An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing
, 5th ed. (Academic
, London
).18.
Moore
, B. C. J.
, and Gockel
, H.
(2002
). “Factors influencing sequential stream segregation
,” Acta. Acust. Acust.
88
, 320
–333
.19.
Näätänen
, R.
, and Winkler
, I.
(1999
). “The concept of auditory stimulus representation in cognitive neuroscience
,” Psychol. Bull.
125
, 826
–859
.20.
Neff
, D. L.
, Jesteadt
, W.
, and Brown
, E.
(1982
). “The relation between gap discrimination and auditory stream segregation
,” Percept. Psychophys.
31
, 493
–501
.21.
Ritter
, W.
, Sanctis
, P.
, Molholm
, S.
, Javitt
, D. C.
, and Foxe
, J. J.
(2006
). “Preattentively grouped tones do not elicit MMN with respect to each other
,” Psychophysiology
43
, 423
–430
.22.
Roberts
, B.
, Glasberg
, B. R.
, and Moore
, B. C. J.
(2002
). “Primitive stream segregation of tone sequences without differences in fundamental frequency or passband
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
112
, 2074
–2085
.23.
Roberts
, B.
, Glasberg
, B. R.
, and Moore
, B. C. J.
(2008
). “Effects of the build-up and resetting of auditory stream segregation on temporal discrimination
,” J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
34
, 992
–1006
.24.
Rogers
, W. L.
, and Bregman
, A. S.
(1993
). “An experimental evaluation of three theories of auditory stream segregation
,” Percept. Psychophys.
53
, 179
–189
.25.
Rogers
, W. L.
, and Bregman
, A. S.
(1998
). “Cumulation of the tendency to segregate auditory streams: Resetting by changes in location and loudness
,” Percept. Psychophys.
60
, 1216
–1227
.26.
Rose
, M. M.
, and Moore
, B. C. J.
(2000
). “Effects of frequency and level on auditory stream segregation
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
108
, 1209
–1214
.27.
Sek
, A.
, and Moore
, B. C. J.
(1994
). “Detection of mixed modulation using correlated and uncorrelated noise modulators
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
95
, 3511
–3518
.28.
Snedecor
, G. W.
, and Cochran
, W. G.
(1967
). Statistical Methods
, 6th ed. (Iowa University Press
, Ames, IA
).29.
Sussman
, E.
, Horváth
, J.
, Winkler
, I.
, and Orr
, M.
(2007
). “The role of attention in the formation of auditory streams
,” Percept. Psychophys.
69
, 136
–152
.30.
Sussman
, E.
, Ritter
, W.
, and Vaughan
, H. G.
(1999
). “An investigation of the auditory streaming effect using event-related brain potentials
,” Psychophysiology
36
, 22
–34
.31.
van Noorden
, L. P. A. S.
(1975
). “Temporal coherence in the perception of tone sequences
,” Ph.D. thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology
, The Netherlands.32.
Vliegen
, J.
, Moore
, B. C. J.
, and Oxenham
, A. J.
(1999
). “The role of spectral and periodicity cues in auditory stream segregation, measured using a temporal discrimination task
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
106
, 938
–945
.33.
Warren
, R. M.
, Obusek
, C. J.
, Farmer
, R. M.
, and Warren
, R. P.
(1969
). “Auditory sequence: Confusion of patterns other than speech and music
,” Science
164
, 586
–587
.34.
Winkler
, I.
, Horváth
, J.
, Teder-Sälejärvi
, W. A.
, Näätänen
, R.
, and Sussman
, E.
(2003
). “Human auditory cortex tracks task-irrelevant sound sources
,” NeuroReport
14
, 2053
–2056
.© 2010 Acoustical Society of America.
2010
Acoustical Society of America
You do not currently have access to this content.