Huss Martina, Moore Brian C J
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2005 Jun;117(6):3841-52. doi: 10.1121/1.1920167.
The perception of pitch for pure tones with frequencies falling inside low- or high-frequency dead regions (DRs) was examined. Subjects adjusted a variable-frequency tone to match the pitch of a fixed tone. Matches within one ear were often erratic for tones falling in a DR, indicating unclear pitch percepts. Matches across ears of subjects with asymmetric hearing loss, and octave matches within ears, indicated that tones falling within a DR were perceived with an unclear pitch and/or a pitch different from "normal" whenever the tones fell more than 0.5 octave within a low- or high-frequency DR. One unilaterally impaired subject, with only a small surviving region between 3 and 4 kHz, matched a fixed 0.5-kHz tone in his impaired ear with, on average, a 3.75-kHz tone in his better ear. When asked to match the 0.5-kHz tone with an amplitude-modulated tone, he adjusted the carrier and modulation frequencies to about 3.8 and 0.5 kHz, respectively, suggesting that some temporal information was still available. Overall, the results indicate that the pitch of low-frequency tones is not conveyed solely by a temporal code. Possibly, there needs to be a correspondence between place and temporal information for a normal pitch to be perceived.
研究了频率落在低频或高频死区（DR）内的纯音的音高感知。受试者调整可变频率音调以匹配固定音调的音高。对于落在DR内的音调，单耳内的匹配通常不稳定，表明音高感知不清晰。患有不对称听力损失的受试者双耳之间的匹配，以及单耳内的八度匹配，表明只要音调在低频或高频DR内下降超过0.5个八度，落在DR内的音调就会被感知为音高不清晰和/或与“正常”不同的音高。一名单侧听力受损的受试者，在3至4 kHz之间只有一个小的存活区域，他将受损耳中固定的0.5 kHz音调平均与较好耳中的3.75 kHz音调匹配。当被要求将0.5 kHz音调与调幅音调匹配时，他分别将载波频率和调制频率调整到约3.8 kHz和0.5 kHz，这表明仍有一些时间信息可用。总体而言，结果表明低频音调的音高并非仅由时间编码传达。可能需要在位置和时间信息之间存在对应关系才能感知到正常音高。
