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Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources

Perception of a temporal pattern in a sub-second time scale is fundamental to conversation, music perception, and other kinds of sound communication. However, its mechanism is not fully understood. A simple example is hearing three successive sounds with short time intervals. The following mispercep...

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Autores principales: Sawai, Ken-ichi, Sato, Yoshiyuki, Aihara, Kazuyuki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3508362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23226136
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00524
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author Sawai, Ken-ichi
Sato, Yoshiyuki
Aihara, Kazuyuki
author_facet Sawai, Ken-ichi
Sato, Yoshiyuki
Aihara, Kazuyuki
author_sort Sawai, Ken-ichi
collection PubMed
description Perception of a temporal pattern in a sub-second time scale is fundamental to conversation, music perception, and other kinds of sound communication. However, its mechanism is not fully understood. A simple example is hearing three successive sounds with short time intervals. The following misperception of the latter interval is known: underestimation of the latter interval when the former is a little shorter or much longer than the latter, and overestimation of the latter when the former is a little longer or much shorter than the latter. Although this misperception of auditory time intervals for simple stimuli might be a cue to understanding the mechanism of time-interval perception, there exists no model that comprehensively explains it. Considering a previous experiment demonstrating that illusory perception does not occur for stimulus sounds with different frequencies, it might be plausible to think that the underlying mechanism of time-interval perception involves a causal inference on sound sources: herein, different frequencies provide cues for different causes. We construct a Bayesian observer model of this time-interval perception. We introduce a probabilistic variable representing the causality of sounds in the model. As prior knowledge, the observer assumes that a single sound source produces periodic and short time intervals, which is consistent with several previous works. We conducted numerical simulations and confirmed that our model can reproduce the misperception of auditory time intervals. A similar phenomenon has also been reported in visual and tactile modalities, though the time ranges for these are wider. This suggests the existence of a common mechanism for temporal pattern perception over modalities. This is because these different properties can be interpreted as a difference in time resolutions, given that the time resolutions for vision and touch are lower than those for audition.
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spelling pubmed-35083622012-12-05 Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources Sawai, Ken-ichi Sato, Yoshiyuki Aihara, Kazuyuki Front Psychol Psychology Perception of a temporal pattern in a sub-second time scale is fundamental to conversation, music perception, and other kinds of sound communication. However, its mechanism is not fully understood. A simple example is hearing three successive sounds with short time intervals. The following misperception of the latter interval is known: underestimation of the latter interval when the former is a little shorter or much longer than the latter, and overestimation of the latter when the former is a little longer or much shorter than the latter. Although this misperception of auditory time intervals for simple stimuli might be a cue to understanding the mechanism of time-interval perception, there exists no model that comprehensively explains it. Considering a previous experiment demonstrating that illusory perception does not occur for stimulus sounds with different frequencies, it might be plausible to think that the underlying mechanism of time-interval perception involves a causal inference on sound sources: herein, different frequencies provide cues for different causes. We construct a Bayesian observer model of this time-interval perception. We introduce a probabilistic variable representing the causality of sounds in the model. As prior knowledge, the observer assumes that a single sound source produces periodic and short time intervals, which is consistent with several previous works. We conducted numerical simulations and confirmed that our model can reproduce the misperception of auditory time intervals. A similar phenomenon has also been reported in visual and tactile modalities, though the time ranges for these are wider. This suggests the existence of a common mechanism for temporal pattern perception over modalities. This is because these different properties can be interpreted as a difference in time resolutions, given that the time resolutions for vision and touch are lower than those for audition. Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-11-28 /pmc/articles/PMC3508362/ /pubmed/23226136 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00524 Text en Copyright © 2012 Sawai, Sato and Aihara. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
spellingShingle Psychology
Sawai, Ken-ichi
Sato, Yoshiyuki
Aihara, Kazuyuki
Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title_full Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title_fullStr Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title_full_unstemmed Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title_short Auditory Time-Interval Perception as Causal Inference on Sound Sources
title_sort auditory time-interval perception as causal inference on sound sources
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3508362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23226136
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00524
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