We report an experiment in which participants (N = 368) were asked to differentiate between major and minor thirds. These intervals could either be formed by diatonic tones from the C major scale (tonal condition) or by a subset of tones from the chromatic scale (atonal condition). We hypothesized that in the tonal condition intervals would be perceived as a function of scale step distances, which we defined as the number of diatonic leaps between two notes of a given music scale. In the atonal condition, we hypothesized that intervals would be perceived as a function of cents. If our hypotheses were supported, we should verify a less accurate performance in the tonal condition, where scale step distances are the same between major and minor thirds. The data corroborated our hypotheses, and we suggest that acoustic measurements of intervallic distances (i.e., frequency ratios and cents) are not optimal when it comes to describing the perceptual quality of intervals in a tonal context. Finally, our research points to the possibility that, in comparison with previous models, scale steps and cents might better capture the notion of global versus local instances of auditory processing.

我们报告的实验中，参与者（ñ = 368）被要求区分三分之二。这些间隔既可以由C大调的全音调音调形成（音调条件），也可以由半音阶的全音调子集形成（音调条件）。我们假设在音调条件下音程将被视为音阶步距的函数，我们将其定义为给定音阶的两个音符之间的全音阶跃变数。在无调性条件下，我们假设间隔将被视为美分的函数。如果我们的假设得到支持，我们应该在音调条件下验证不太准确的性能，在音调条件下，三分之二的音阶步距是相同的。数据证实了我们的假设，并且我们建议对间隔距离进行声学测量（即 在描述音调环境中间隔的感知质量时，频率比和美分不是最佳选择。最后，我们的研究指出，与以前的模型相比，缩放步长和分值可能会更好地反映听觉处理的全局实例与局部实例的概念。