On the relative influence of individual harmonics on pitch judgment

Spectral weighting functions were estimated in a pitch-comparison task to assess the relative influence of individual harmonics on listeners' pitch judgment. The stimuli were quasi-harmonic complex tones composed of the first 12 components, with fundamental frequencies ranging from 100 to 800 Hz. On each stimulus presentation the frequency of each harmonic was randomly jittered by a small amount. The perceptual weight for each harmonic was calculated as the correlation coefficient between the binary responses of the listener and the frequency jitters for that harmonic. Although in general the present results conform to previous ones showing the predominant role of several low-ranked harmonics, discrepancies exist in details. Contrary to some previous reports that the dominant harmonics were of fixed harmonic ranks regardless of their frequencies, the current results showed that the dominant harmonics were best described as close to a fixed absolute frequency of 600 Hz.