Summary statistics in auditory perception.

ABSTRACT: Sensory signals are transduced at high resolution, but their structure must be stored in a more compact format. Here we provide evidence that the auditory system summarizes the temporal details of sounds using time-averaged statistics. We measured discrimination of 'sound textures' that were characterized by particular statistical properties, as normally result from the superposition of many acoustic features in auditory scenes. When listeners discriminated examples of different textures, performance improved with excerpt duration. In contrast, when listeners discriminated different examples of the same texture, performance declined with duration, a paradoxical result given that the information available for discrimination grows with duration. These results indicate that once these sounds

SUBMITTER: McDermott JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4143328 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature