Psychophysical research about the interaction between perception aspects providing robustness to sequential auditory representation

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It has been modeled that the auditory system encodes acoustic signals into two independent informations. One is tonotopic information reflecting the frequency response characteristics of the basilar membrane, and another is periodicity information reflecting the temporal patterns of phase-locked auditory nerve firing. Based on the previous study about size perception of sound source, a hypothesis can be proposed that the tonotopic and periodicity information are combined into an internal “two-dimensional representational plane.” The current study tested this hypothesis by conducting an experiment to recognize the transition pattern of vowel-like sounds on the plane. Listeners were able to recognize the transition patterns on the axes of tonotopic and periodicity information exclusively. However, they were unable to follow the trajectories of sounds in the two-dimensional representational plane. The vowel-like sounds were simulated by a computational model of auditory system, Auditory Image Model. While the “excitation pattern” displayed transition patterns corresponding to the manipulation of resonant scaling (RS) only, “Summary SAI” displayed both of patterns of fundamental frequency (F0) and RS. It suggests the interaction between RS and F0 on the periodicity information dimension.