Binary responses fail when the nature of a sound difference matters

Evidence

For many psychoacoustic experiments the request to be given to the listen­ ers is straightforward. In the pitch example above one might ask listeners to indicate which of two stimuli has the highest pitch or whether the pitch of a single stimulus was changing or not. In experiments where the objec­ tive is to establish the nature of change in a sound, such as whether one synthetic sound is more natural than another, it is not so easy. A simple “yes” or “no” would not be very informative since it would not indicate the nature of the difference. A number of rating scales have been pro­ duced that are commonly used in such cases, where the listener is invited to choose the point on the scale that best describes what they have heard. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2366

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: Relevant to interpreting the qualitative dimensions of sound — ties into the reader’s interest in silence and noise as more than merely ‘present or absent’.

Related

• Pitch lacks a magnitude dimension, complicating its subjective measurement (similarity 0.82)
• Loudness is measured either by rating magnitude or by matching equal loudness (similarity 0.80)
• Modern pitch research relies on discrimination tasks because subjective pitch ratings are problematic (similarity 0.80)
• Psychoacoustic findings are experimentally established yet often lack anatomical or physical explanation. (similarity 0.79)
• Psychoacoustic results depend on experimental procedure and sensitivity rises with alternatives. (similarity 0.79)
• Level variations within a sound and differences between sounds activate distinct hearing processes. (similarity 0.79)
• Pitch shifts with intensity but individual listener variability is large. (similarity 0.79)
• Sound reproduction quality depends on both physical acoustics and human perception (similarity 0.79)
• Pitch lacks magnitude, so rating scales fail where loudness scales succeed (similarity 0.78)
• Pitch strength is a distinct perceptual dimension absent from loudness (similarity 0.78)
• No single standard metric describes auditory intensity discrimination (similarity 0.78)
• Reported pitch-with-intensity shifts vary widely with method (similarity 0.78)
• Loudness response variability is informative signal, not noise to discard (similarity 0.78)
• Psychoacoustic findings often lack known anatomical or physical mechanisms (similarity 0.78)
• Pitch strength varies independently of perceived pitch height (similarity 0.78)