TY - JOUR
T1 - A perceptual learning investigation of the pitch elicited by amplitude-modulated noise
AU - Fitzgerald, Matthew B.
AU - Wright, Beverly A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Dr. Stan Sheft for his helpful advice. We also thank Karen Banai, Tessa Bent, Julia Huyck, Julia Mossbridge, Jeanette Ortiz, Yuxuan Zhang, associate editor Neal Viemeister and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health∕National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (F31-DC05093-01 awarded to M.B.F.; R29-DC02997 and R01 DC04453 awarded to B.A.W.) and by Northwestern University (Graduate Research Grant awarded to M.B.F.).
PY - 2005/12
Y1 - 2005/12
N2 - Noise that is amplitude modulated at rates ranging from 40 to 850 Hz can elicit a sensation of pitch. Here, the processing of this temporally based pitch was investigated using a perceptual-learning paradigm. Nine listeners were trained (1 hour per day for 6-8 days) to discriminate a standard rate of sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) from a faster rate in a single condition (150 Hz SAM rate, 5 kHz low-pass carrier). All trained listeners improved significantly on that condition. These trained listeners subsequently showed no more improvement than nine untrained controls on pure-tone and rippled-noise discrimination with the same pitch, and on SAM-rate discrimination with a 30 Hz rate, although they did show some improvement with a 300 Hz rate. In addition, most trained, but not control, listeners were worse at detecting SAM at 150 Hz after, compared to before training. These results indicate that listeners can learn to improve their ability to discriminate SAM rate with multiple-hour training and that the mechanism that is modified by learning encodes (1) the pitch of SAM noise but not that of pure tones and rippled noise, (2) different SAM rates separately, and (3) differences in SAM rate more effectively than cues for SAM detection.
AB - Noise that is amplitude modulated at rates ranging from 40 to 850 Hz can elicit a sensation of pitch. Here, the processing of this temporally based pitch was investigated using a perceptual-learning paradigm. Nine listeners were trained (1 hour per day for 6-8 days) to discriminate a standard rate of sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) from a faster rate in a single condition (150 Hz SAM rate, 5 kHz low-pass carrier). All trained listeners improved significantly on that condition. These trained listeners subsequently showed no more improvement than nine untrained controls on pure-tone and rippled-noise discrimination with the same pitch, and on SAM-rate discrimination with a 30 Hz rate, although they did show some improvement with a 300 Hz rate. In addition, most trained, but not control, listeners were worse at detecting SAM at 150 Hz after, compared to before training. These results indicate that listeners can learn to improve their ability to discriminate SAM rate with multiple-hour training and that the mechanism that is modified by learning encodes (1) the pitch of SAM noise but not that of pure tones and rippled noise, (2) different SAM rates separately, and (3) differences in SAM rate more effectively than cues for SAM detection.
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U2 - 10.1121/1.2074687
DO - 10.1121/1.2074687
M3 - Article
C2 - 16419824
AN - SCOPUS:29244457246
SN - 0001-4966
VL - 118
SP - 3794
EP - 3803
JO - journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - journal of the Acoustical Society of America
IS - 6
ER -