RUI: Dynamic Interaction of Pitch and Loudness

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In a natural listening environment many sounds exhibit a positivecorrelation between changes in pitch and loudness. As sounds get louder,they tend to get higher in pitch. Surprisingly, most previous research onpitch and loudness perception has used static tones that remain constant inboth frequency and intensity. This has yielded static structural models ofpitch and loudness perception that may not accurately reflect the perceptionof pitch and loudness in a natural listening environment. Recent work hasshown that under dynamic conditions, pitch and loudness interact in a waythat is opposite that predicted by these static models. The current projectsets forth a theoretical framework in which it is proposed that the dynamicperceptual interaction of pitch and loudness has evolved to take advantageof the correlation between frequency and intensity change that occurs in anatural listening environment. Under various experimental conditions,listeners will be presented with frequency- and amplitude-modulated sounds,and in a variety of psychophysical experiments make perceptual judgmentsabout positively and negatively correlated changes in frequency andintensity. The findings will provide an empirically based, theoreticalaccount of dynamic pitch and loudness interaction, and provide somepreliminary information about the location of the mediating neuralmechanisms. The work has potential implications for the hearing impaired,communications, auditory display, and sensory substitution systems for theblind.