Pazdera Jesse K, Trainor Laurel J
Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Feb;87(2):545-564. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02982-8. Epub 2024 Dec 10.
Past research suggests that pitch height can influence the perceived tempo of speech and music, such that higher-pitched signals seem faster than lower-pitched ones. However, previous studies have analyzed perceived tempo across a relatively limited range of fundamental frequencies. To investigate whether this higher-equals-faster illusion generalizes across the wider range of human hearing, we conducted a series of five experiments. We asked participants to compare the tempo of repeating tones from six different octaves and with 15 different interonset intervals to a metronomic standard tempo. In Experiments 1-3, we observed an inverted U-shaped effect of pitch on perceived tempo, with the perceived tempo of piano tones peaking between A4 (440 Hz) and A5 (880 Hz) and decreasing at lower and higher frequencies. This bias was consistent across base tempos and was only slightly attenuated by synchronous tapping with the repeating tones. Experiment 4 tested synthetic complex tones to verify that this nonlinearity generalizes beyond the piano timbre and that it was not related to the presence of low-frequency mechanical noise present in our piano tones. Experiment 5 revealed that the decrease in perceived tempo at extremely high octaves can be abolished by exposing participants to only high-pitched tones. Together, our results suggest that perceived tempo depends more on the relative pitch within a context than on absolute pitch and that tempo biases may invert or taper off beyond a two-octave range. We relate this context-dependence to human vocal ranges and propose that illusory tempo effects are strongest within pitch ranges consistent with human vocalization.
以往的研究表明，音高可以影响人们对语音和音乐节奏的感知，即高音调信号听起来比低音调信号更快。然而，此前的研究分析的是相对有限的基频范围内的感知节奏。为了探究这种高音等同于更快的错觉是否能推广到更广泛的人类听觉范围，我们进行了一系列五个实验。我们要求参与者将来自六个不同八度且具有15种不同起始间隔的重复音调的节奏与节拍器的标准节奏进行比较。在实验1至3中，我们观察到音高对感知节奏有倒U形效应，钢琴音调的感知节奏在A4（440赫兹）和A5（880赫兹）之间达到峰值，并在较低和较高频率处下降。这种偏差在不同的基本节奏中都是一致的，并且通过与重复音调同步敲击仅略有减弱。实验4测试了合成复合音调，以验证这种非线性效应不仅适用于钢琴音色，而且与我们钢琴音调中存在的低频机械噪声无关。实验5表明，通过只让参与者接触高音调，可以消除极高八度时感知节奏的下降。总之，我们的结果表明，感知节奏更多地取决于情境中的相对音高而非绝对音高，并且节奏偏差可能在超过两个八度的范围内反转或逐渐减弱。我们将这种情境依赖性与人类的发声范围联系起来，并提出虚幻的节奏效应在与人类发声一致的音高范围内最强。
