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The Effect of Instrumental Timbre on Interval Discrimination

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  • Jean Mary Zarate
  • Caroline R Ritson
  • David Poeppel

Abstract

We tested non-musicians and musicians in an auditory psychophysical experiment to assess the effects of timbre manipulation on pitch-interval discrimination. Both groups were asked to indicate the larger of two presented intervals, comprised of four sequentially presented pitches; the second or fourth stimulus within a trial was either a sinusoidal (or “pure”), flute, piano, or synthetic voice tone, while the remaining three stimuli were all pure tones. The interval-discrimination tasks were administered parametrically to assess performance across varying pitch distances between intervals (“interval-differences”). Irrespective of timbre, musicians displayed a steady improvement across interval-differences, while non-musicians only demonstrated enhanced interval discrimination at an interval-difference of 100 cents (one semitone in Western music). Surprisingly, the best discrimination performance across both groups was observed with pure-tone intervals, followed by intervals containing a piano tone. More specifically, we observed that: 1) timbre changes within a trial affect interval discrimination; and 2) the broad spectral characteristics of an instrumental timbre may influence perceived pitch or interval magnitude and make interval discrimination more difficult.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Mary Zarate & Caroline R Ritson & David Poeppel, 2013. "The Effect of Instrumental Timbre on Interval Discrimination," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-9, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0075410
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075410
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Shui' er Han & Janani Sundararajan & Daniel Liu Bowling & Jessica Lake & Dale Purves, 2011. "Co-Variation of Tonality in the Music and Speech of Different Cultures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(5), pages 1-5, May.
    2. Donald Dorfman & Edward Alf, 1968. "Maximum likelihood estimation of parameters of signal detection theory—A direct solution," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 33(1), pages 117-124, March.
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