Introduction

To survive, organisms need to organize perceptual input into coherent, usable structures. Research has illuminated the potential role of frequency of occurrence and duration as cues to extract statistical regularities from our environment. Musical stimuli provide a unique opportunity to study how these cues are used to organize auditory input into higher level perceptual entities, i.e., pitch structure, and to assess the influence of cognitive schema.

Methods

To examine the relative importance of these two cues in pitch structure perception, we constructed novel tone sequences in which frequency of occurrence and duration cues were pitted against each other. We assessed perceived pitch structure in musically trained and untrained listeners using a probe tone paradigm.

Results

In all experiments, a 3-tiered hierarchy of pitch structure emerged, with highest ratings for tones of longer duration, next highest for shorter, more frequent tones and lowest for probe tones that did not occur in the sequence. The hierarchy did not reflect assimilation to Western tonal schema.

Discussion

Our results argue against theories positing the same mechanism for the processing of duration and frequency of occurrence, and that duration is weighted preferentially. We further suggest that the organization of perceptual information will proceed according to whatever information is relevant, available, and most easily acquired.

中文翻译：

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持续时间和出现频率在感知音高结构中的作用。

介绍

为了生存，生物体需要将感知输入组织成连贯的、可用的结构。研究阐明了发生频率和持续时间作为从我们的环境中提取统计规律的线索的潜在作用。音乐刺激提供了一个独特的机会来研究如何使用这些线索将听觉输入组织成更高级别的感知实体（即音高结构），并评估认知图式的影响。

方法

为了检查这两个线索在音高结构感知中的相对重要性，我们构建了新的音调序列，其中出现频率和持续时间线索相互竞争。我们使用探测音范式评估了受过音乐训练和未经训练的听众的感知音高结构。

结果

在所有实验中，出现了 3 层音高结构层次结构，持续时间较长的音调评级最高，较短、频率较高的音调评级次高，序列中未出现的探测音调评级最低。这种层次结构并没有反映出对西方音调模式的同化。

讨论

我们的结果与提出相同机制来处理持续时间和发生频率的理论相悖，并且持续时间优先加权。我们进一步建议，感知信息的组织将根据相关的、可用的和最容易获取的信息进行。