Ruusuvirta Timo, Wikgren Jan, Astikainen Piia
Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 13, 00014, Helsinki, Finland.
Psychol Res. 2008 Jan;72(1):74-8. doi: 10.1007/s00426-006-0094-y. Epub 2006 Sep 26.
Two-tone pitch-comparison tasks typically comprise several successive pairs of successive tones separated by silent intervals. The serial occurrence of such pairs has been associated with degraded task performance, but the nature of this association is not fully understood. Human adult participants were presented with successive pairs of successive tones. The latter, to-be-compared tone of a pair could differ from the former, to-be-remembered tone of 1046.5 Hz by no more than +/-15 Hz (25 cents). The direction of this difference was easier to identify when it was opposite to that of the preceding pair than when being the same. Merely responding accordingly (irrespectively of whether the response was correct or not) was found not to account for this finding. Our study demonstrates proactive interference in a two-tone pitch comparison task as the difficulty to remember when the first tone of the present pair occurred relative to the last tone of the immediately preceding pair.
双音高比较任务通常包括几组由静音间隔隔开的连续双音。这种双音对的连续出现与任务表现下降有关，但这种关联的本质尚未完全理解。成年人类参与者会听到连续的双音对。一对双音中后一个要比较的音与前一个要记住的1046.5赫兹的音的差异不超过±15赫兹（25音分）。当这种差异的方向与前一对双音的差异方向相反时，比方向相同时更容易识别。研究发现，仅仅做出相应反应（无论反应是否正确）并不能解释这一发现。我们的研究表明，在双音高比较任务中存在前摄干扰，即相对于紧接在前的一对双音的最后一个音，记住当前这对双音的第一个音出现的时间存在困难。
