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Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Making Sense of Listening: The IMAP Test Battery
Published on: October 11, 2010
Learning to discriminate frequency modulation rate can benefit and worsen pitch acuity
Matthew G Wisniewski1, Estella H Liu1, Barbara A Church1
1Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Park Hall Room 204, Buffalo, New York 14260 mgw@buffalo.edu, hliu6@buffalo.edu, bchurch@buffalo.edu, emiii@buffalo.edu.
Abstract:
Participants were trained to discriminate frequency modulation rates (FM-rate training) or Gabor patch orientations (visual training) in a same-different task for two different training lengths. Test discriminations involved trains of FM sweeps with identical modulation rates, but different frequencies. FM-rate training enhanced test accuracy (relative to visual) when sweep trains contained frequencies similar to training. For extended FM-rate training, the opposite was true for trains shifted one octave higher. In contrast to previous work, generalization of learning to the untrained dimension (pitch) was not well accounted for by conceptual learning. Mechanisms of stimulus learning may better explain the current cross-dimensional generalization.
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