Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 20, 2026

A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons
Published on: November 9, 2018
Dual mechanisms in the perceptual processing of click train temporal regularity
Dennis P Phillips1, Rachel N Dingle, Susan E Hall
1Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Department of Surgery, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, PO Box 15000, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2. dennis.phillips@dal.ca
Abstract:
Two experiments measured human sensitivity to temporal jitter in 25-click trains with inter-click intervals (ICIs) between 5 and 100 ms. In a naturalistic experiment using wideband clicks, jitter thresholds were a nonmonotonic function of ICI, peaking for ICIs near 40-60 ms. In a subsequent experiment, clicks were high-passed and presented against a low-frequency noise masker. Jitter threshold vs ICI functions lost the positive slope over short ICIs but retained the negative slope at long ICIs. The same behavior was seen in click rate discrimination tasks. Different processes mediate regularity analysis for click trains with ICIs above and below 40-60 ms.
Related Concept Videos
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...
Hearing
Perception
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...
The Cochlea
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same frequency...
Perceptual Constancy
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...

