Abstract
This article extends an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect proposed by Henry and McAuley (2009a) to the auditory tau effect. Two experiments were conducted using an AXB design in which listeners judged the relative pitch of a middle target tone (X) in ascending and descending three-tone sequences. In Experiment 1, sequences were isochronous, establishing constant fast, medium, and slow velocity conditions. No systematic distortions in perceived target pitch were observed, and thresholds were similar across velocity conditions. Experiment 2 introduced to-be-ignored variations in target timing. Variations in target timing that deviated from constant velocity conditions introduced systematic distortions in perceived target pitch, indicative of a robust auditory tau effect. Consistent with an auditory motion hypothesis, the magnitude of the tau effect was larger at faster velocities. In addition, the tau effect was generally stronger for descending sequences than for ascending sequences. Combined with previous work on the auditory kappa effect, the imputed velocity model and associated auditory motion hypothesis provide a unified quantitative account of both auditory tau and kappa effects. In broader terms, these findings add support to the view that pitch and time relations in auditory patterns are fundamentally interdependent.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbe, M. (1936). The spatial effect upon the perception of time. Japanese Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1–52.
Abe, S. (1935). Experimental study on the correlation between time and space. Tohoku Psychologica Folia, 3, 53–68.
Anderson, N. H. (1974). Algebraic models in perception. In E. Cartheterette & M. P. Friedman (Eds.), Handbook of perception: Vol. II. Psychophysical judgment and measurement (pp. 258–259). New York: Academic Press.
Ayotte, J., Peretz, I., Rousseau, C., Bard, C., & Bojanowski, M. (2000). Patterns of music agnosia associated with middle cerebral artery infarcts. Brain, 123, 1926–1938. doi:10.1093/brain/123.9.1926
Barnes, R., & Jones, M. R. (2000). Expectancy, attention, and time. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 254–311. doi:10.1006/cogp.2000.0738
Benussi, V. (1913). Psychologie der Zeitauffassung. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung.
Bill, J. C., & Teft, L. W. (1969). Space-time relations: Effects of time on perceived visual extent. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 196–199. doi:10.1037/h0027425
Bill, J. C., & Teft, L. W. (1972). Space-time relations: The effects of variations in stimulus and interstimulus interval duration on perceived visual extent. Acta Psychologica, 36, 358–369.
Burns, E. M., & Ward, W. D. (1978). Categorical perception—phenomenon or epiphenomenon: Evidence from experiments in the perception of melodic musical intervals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 63, 456–468.
Christensen, I. P., & Huang, Y. L. (1979). The auditory tau effect and memory for pitch. Perception & Psychophysics, 26, 489–494.
Cohen, J., Christensen, I., & Ono, A. (1974). Influence of temporal intervals on comparative judgements of pitch: A study of subjective relativity. Tohoku Psychologica Folia, 33, 76–87.
Cohen, J., Hansel, C. E. M., & Sylvester, J. D. (1953). A new phenomenon in time judgment. Nature, 172, 901.
Cohen, J., Hansel, C. E. M., & Sylvester, J. D. (1954). Interdependence of temporal and auditory judgments. Nature, 174, 642–644. doi:10.1038/174642a0
Cohen, J., Hansel, C. E. M., & Sylvester, J. D. (1955). Interdependence in judgments of space, time and movement. Acta Psychologica, 11, 360–372.
Collyer, C. E. (1977). Discrimination of spatial and temporal intervals defined by three light flashes: Effects of spacing on temporal judgments and of timing on spatial judgments. Perception & Psychophysics, 21, 357–364. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2007.07.009
Crowder, R. G., & Neath, I. (1995). The influence of pitch on time perception in short melodies. Music Perception, 12, 379–386.
Di Pietro, M., Laganaro, M., Leemann, B., & Schnider, A. (2004). Receptive amusia: Temporal auditory processing deficit in a professional musician following a left temporo-parietal lesion. Neuropsychologia, 42, 868–877. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.12.004
Douglas, K. M., & Bilkey, D. K. (2007). Amusia is associated with deficits in spatial processing. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 915–921. doi:10.1038/nn1925
Ellis, R. J., & Jones, M. R. (2009). The role of accent salience and joint accent structure in meter perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35, 264–280. doi:10.1037/a0013482
Eriksen, C. E. (1995). The flankers task and response competition: A useful took for investigating a variety of cognitive problems. In C. Bundesen & H. Shibuya (Eds.), Visual selective attention (pp. 101–118). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Foxton, J. M., Dean, J. L., Gee, R., Peretz, I., & Griffiths, T. D. (2004). Characterization of deficits in pitch perception underlying “tone deafness.” Brain, 127, 801–810. doi:10.1093/brain/awh105
Foxton, J. M., Nandy, R. K., & Griffiths, T. D. (2006). Rhythm deficits in “tone deafness.” Brain & Cognition, 62, 24–29. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2006.03.005
Freyd, J. J., & Finke, R. A. (1984). Representational momentum. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 10, 126–132. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.10.1.126
Freyd, J. J., Kelly, M. H., & DeKay, M. L. (1990). Representational momentum in memory for pitch. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 1107–1117. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.16.6.1107
Geldreich, E. W. (1934). A lecture-room demonstrator of the visual tau effect. American Journal of Psychology, 46, 483–485. doi:10.2307/1415607
Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Griffiths, T. D., Rees, A., Witton, C., Cross, P. M., Shakir, R. A., & Green, G. G. R. (1997). Spatial and temporal processing deficits following right hemisphere infarction: A psychophysical study. Brain, 120, 785–794. doi:10.1093/brain/120.5.785
Grondin, S., & Plourde, M. (2007). Discrimination of time intervals presented in sequences: Spatial effects with multiple auditory sources. Human Movement Science, 26, 702–716. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2007.07.009
Handel, S. (1988). Space is to time as vision is to audition: Seductive but misleading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 14, 315–317. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.14.2.315
Helson, H., & King, S. M. (1931). The tau effect: An example of psychological relativity. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 14, 202–217.
Henry, M. J., & McAuley, J. D. (2009a). Evaluation of an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35, 551–564.
Henry, M. J., & McAuley, J. D. (2009b). Relative contribution of frequency and duration cues to estimates of frequency change in tone sequences and glides. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 2523.
Huang, Y. L., & Jones, B. (1982). On the interdependence of temporal and spatial judgments. Perception & Psychophysics, 32, 7–14.
Hubbard, T. L. (1995). Auditory representational momentum: Surface form, direction, and velocity effects. American Journal of Psychology, 108, 255–274. doi:10.2307/1423131
Hyde, K. L., & Peretz, I. (2004). Brains that are out of tune but in time. Psychological Science, 15, 356–360. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00683.x
Ishihara, M., Keller, P. E., Rossetti, Y., & Prinz, W. (2008). Horizontal spatial representations of time: Evidence for the STEARC effect. Cortex, 44, 454–461. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2007.08.010
Johnsrude, I. S., Penhune, V. B., & Zatorre, R. J. (2000). Functional specificity in the right human auditory cortex for perceiving pitch direction. Brain, 123, 155–163. doi:10.1093/brain/123.1.155
Johnston, H. M., & Jones, M. R. (2006). Higher order pattern structure influences auditory representational momentum. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 32, 2–17. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.32.1.2
Jones, B., & Huang, Y. L. (1982). Space-time dependencies in psychophysical judgment of extent and duration: Algebraic models of the tau and kappa effects. Psychological Bulletin, 91, 128–142.
Jones, M. R. (1976). Time, our lost dimension: Toward a new theory of perception, attention, and memory. Psychological Review, 83, 323–335. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.83.5.323
Jones, M. R., Moynihan, H., MacKenzie, N., & Puente, J. (2002). Temporal aspects of stimulus-driven attending in dynamic arrays. Psychological Science, 13, 313–319. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00458
Jones, M. R., & Yee, W. (1993). Attending to auditory events: The role of temporal organization. In S. McAdams & E. Bigand (Eds.), Thinking in sound: The cognitive psychology of human audition (pp. 69–112). New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.
Kubovy, M. (1981). Concurrent-pitch segregation and the theory of indispensable attributes. In M. Kubovy & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Perceptual organization (pp. 58–98). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Large, E. W., & Jones, M. R. (1999). The dynamics of attending: How people track time-varying events. Psychological Review, 106, 119–159. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.106.1.119
Lebrun-Guillaud, G., & Tillmann, B. (2007). Influence of a tone’s tonal function on temporal change detection. Perception & Psychophysics, 69, 1450–1459.
Liégeois-Cheval, C., Peretz, I., Babai, M., Laguitton, V., & Chauvel, P. (1998). Contribution of different cortical areas in the temporal lobes to music processing. Brain, 121, 1853–1867. doi:10.1093/brain/121.10.1853
MacKenzie, N. (2007). The kappa effect in pitch/time context (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, (2007). Dissertation Abstracts International, 68, 132.
MacKenzie, N., & Jones, M. R. (2005, November). The auditory kappa effect revisited. Paper presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto.
Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, C. D. (1991). Detection theory: A user’s guide. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Matsuda, F., & Matsuda, M. (1979). Effects of spatial separation as a cue of time estimation in children and adults. Japanese Psychological Research, 21, 132–138.
Matsuda, F., & Matsuda, M. (1981). The anti-kappa effect in successively presented stimuli: A developmental study. Japanese Psychological Research, 23, 9–17.
McAuley, J. D., & Jones, M. R. (2003). Modeling effects of rhythmic context on perceived duration: A comparison of interval and entrainment approaches to short-interval timing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 29, 1102–1125. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.6.1102
Peretz, I. (2006). The nature of music from a biological perspective. Cognition, 100, 1–32. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.004
Peretz, I., & Coltheart, M. (2003). Modularity of music processing. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 688–691. doi:10.1038/nn1083
Price-Williams, D. R. (1954). The kappa effect. Nature, 173, 363–364. doi:10.1038/173363a0
Rusconi, E., Kwan, B., Giordano, B. L., Umiltà, C., & Butterworth, B. (2006). Spatial representation of pitch height: The SMARC effect. Cognition, 99, 113–129. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.01.004
Sarrazin, J.-C., Giraudo, M.-D., Pailhous, J., & Bootsma, R. J. (2004). Dynamics of balancing space and time in memory: The tau and kappa effects revisited. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 30, 411–430. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.30.3.411
Sarrazin, J.-C., Giraudo, M.-D., & Pittenger, J. B. (2007). Tau and kappa effects in physical space: The case of audition. Psychological Research, 71, 201–218. doi:10.1007/s00426-005-0019-1
Shepard, R. N. (1984). Ecological constraints on internal representation: Resonant kinematics of perceiving, imagining, thinking, and dreaming. Psychological Review, 91, 417–447. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.91.4.417
Shigeno, S. (1986). The auditory tau and kappa effects for speech and nonspeech stimuli. Perception & Psychophysics, 40, 9–19.
Shigeno, S. (1993). The interdependence of pitch and temporal judgments by absolute pitch processors. Perception & Psychophysics, 54, 682–692.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–652.
Tramo, M., Shah, G. D., & Braida, L. D. (2002). Functional role of auditory cortex in frequency processing and pitch perception. Journal of Neurophysiology, 87, 122–139. doi:10.1152/jn.00104.1999
Ward, W. D. (1982). Absolute pitch. In D. Deutsch (Ed.), The psychology of music (pp. 265–298). New York: Academic Press.
Wilson, S. J., Pressing, J. L., & Wales, R. J. (2002). Modeling rhythmic function in a musician post-stroke. Neuropsychologia, 40, 1494–1505.
Yoblick, D. A., & Salvendy, G. (1970). Influence of frequency on the estimation of time for auditory, visual, and tactile modalities: The kappa effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 86, 157–164. doi:10.1037/h0029935
Zatorre, R. J. (1988). Pitch perception of complex tones and human temporal-lobe function. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 84, 566–572.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was partially supported by NSF Grant BCS-0818271. Portions of this research were presented at the 10th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Henry, M.J., McAuley, J.D. & Zaleha, M. Evaluation of an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory tau effect. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 71, 1399–1413 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.71.6.1399
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.71.6.1399