An Evaluation of Psychophysical Models of Auditory Change Perception

By Christophe Micheyl, Christian Kaernbach, L. Demany. 2008

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In many psychophysical experiments, the participant's task is to detect small changes along a given stimulus dimension, or to identify the direction (e.g., upward vs. downward) of such changes. The results of these experiments are traditionally analyzed using a constant-variance Gaussian (CVG) model or a high-threshold (HT) model. Here, the authors demonstrate that for changes along three basic sound dimensions (frequency, intensity, and amplitude-modulation rate), such models cannot account for the observed relationship between detection thresholds and direction-identification thresholds. It is shown that two alternative models can account for this relationship. One of them is based on the idea of sensory “quanta”; the other assumes that small changes are detected on the basis of Poisson processes with low means. The predictions of these two models are then compared against receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) for the detection of changes in sound intensity. It is concluded that human listeners' perception of small and unidimensional acoustic changes is better described by a discrete-state Poisson model than by the more commonly used CVG model or by the less favored HT and quantum models.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Speech & Audio, Cognitive Science & Psychology

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Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Video (2021, background): “[156] Christophe Micheyl, Christian Kaernbach, and Laurent Demany.”