Tones confound gap detection with spectral-change detection.

Evidence

For pure tones, however, the frequencies introduced by the gap greatly change the spectral characteristics of the stimulus. Although tone without the gap is not fully frequency specific (because its duration is not infinite), the spectral differences between the stimulus with the gap and the one without are readily visible. We observe that the 2000-Hz tone has a broader bandwidth than the long duration tone. For this particular gap scenario, the side lobes and the broader primary lobe may be audible to a listener. As a result, that listener may be able to detect the spectral changes associated with a gap, rather than detecting the temporal interruption itself. If this were to happen in an experiment, the gap detection thresholds may not reflect temporal processing at all. The consequence of these spectral changes is that getting extremely frequency-specific measures for gap detection can be difficult. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 957

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEFINE: Introduces the key methodological confound (‘spectral splatter’) that separates true temporal perception from spectral cue use.

Related

• Gap added to a tone creates audible spectral splatter or side lobes. (similarity 0.90)
• Brief quiet gaps in sounds can introduce spectral cues that contaminate gap detection results (similarity 0.87)
• Inserting a temporal gap into a stimulus produces spectral splatter at the gap edges (similarity 0.85)
• Gap detection measures only on-off discrimination and misses fluctuation-rate coding (similarity 0.84)
• Wider stimulus bandwidths improve listeners’ ability to detect temporal gaps (similarity 0.84)
• Gap detection measures only on-off sensitivity, not coding of fluctuation rates. (similarity 0.84)
• Gap detection thresholds improve with increasing stimulus bandwidth but not frequency region (similarity 0.83)
• Inserting a temporal gap can change a sound’s spectrum, confounding gap measures (similarity 0.82)
• Higher-frequency gaps need narrower spectral widths to trigger Zwicker tones (similarity 0.82)
• Only three human studies have directly manipulated sound-brain entrainment perceptually (similarity 0.82)
• A spectral gap in switched-off noise yields a tonal afterimage, not a noisy one (similarity 0.82)
• Brief tones inject extra frequencies called spectral splatter into the stimulus (similarity 0.81)
• Gap detection offers quick but shallow measures of temporal acuity (similarity 0.81)
• Gap detection acuity improves with presentation level up to about 30 dB SL. (similarity 0.81)
• Longer pure-tone durations produce narrower spectral peaks with less splatter (similarity 0.80)