Bruce Walker's Masters Research


Congruency Effects with Dynamic Auditory Stimuli

by
Bruce N. Walker

ABSTRACT

As auditory displays become more common it is increasingly important to understand the perception of complex and dynamic auditory stimuli and how the information contained in the various dimensions of these stimuli influences performance. In the present study listeners made keypress responses to dynamic sound stimuli which started high or low in pitch and became higher or lower in pitch during each trial. The results showed that pitch and pitch change interacted in an asymmetrical manner, with pitch information intruding more on judgments of pitch change than vice versa. Neither pitch nor pitch change interacted with vertically arranged responses to produce the strong spatial S-R compatibility effects that were expected based on previous research and on descriptions of pitch in everyday language. Analytic versus holistic listening strategies or the physical location of the sounds may affect interactions of the stimuli and responses in this type of selective listening task.


Complete Masters Document: Walker_masters.pdf (Adobe PDF format, 136k)


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