Haskins Publications

Number	206
Year	1976
Drawer	4
Entry Date	06/01/1999
Authors	Cutting, J. E., Rosner, B. S., & Foard, C. F.
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Publication	Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 361-378.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0206.pdf
Abstract	In three experiments with 16 normally hearing young adults, sawtooth acoustic stimuli of different rise times were identified as coming from a plucked string instrument (pluck) or a bowed one (bow). Like stop consonants, these sounds were perceived categorically--discrimination was poor for stimuli identified as belonging to a single class but good for those identified as members of different classes. Varying the interval between 2 successive musiclike stimuli hardly altereddiscrimination. Sawtooth stimuli lasting 750 msec were clearly perceived categorically; those lasting 250 msec were not. Prolonged exposure to a pluck or bow stimulus shifted the rise-time boundary between categories. Shifts due to such selective adaptation decreased as adapting and test stimuli shared fewer characteristics. Adaptation of postulated "feature detectors" therefore may occur in input systems prior to the detectors themselves. Findings contradict previous claims that categorical perception and selective adaptation are manifestations of psychological processes unique to speech perception.
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