The effects of duration and context on the perception of the pitch of the missing-fundamental tones

Abstract

To clarify the effect of duration and context on the pitch judgments of missing-fundamental tones that are composed of unresolved harmonics, an experiment was conducted that required participants to judge whether the pitches of two auditory stimuli with missing-fundamental tones ascended or descended. Participants made their judgments on the basis of the harmonic components for short-duration tones and based on the fundamental frequency (F0) for long-duration tones. It is considered that the duration of tones affected the saliency of F0. In addition, participants preferred F0 as the pitch cue and the preference persisted despite the alteration of the duration of tones.