Brief quiet gaps in sounds can introduce spectral cues that contaminate gap detection results

Evidence

Before we can discuss the experimental results, however, we must first consider the acoustic effects of inserting a brief quiet gap in the waveform of a sound stimulus. As we will see below, introducing a temporal gap into a stimulus can alter the spectral characteristics of that sound. Experimenters testing both steady and fluctuating stimuli must consider whether spectral cues are present in their sounds. Should this happen, the gap detection threshold no longer reflects temporal processing, but is actually a spectral processing measure. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 952

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crucial methodological distinction: gap detection measures genuinely temporal processing only when spectral cues are absent.