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Updated: May 23, 2026
09:04
Uncovering Beat Deafness: Detecting Rhythm Disorders with Synchronized Finger Tapping and Perceptual Timing Tasks
Published on: March 16, 2015
Timing-induced illusory percepts of pitch
Jesse K Pazdera1, Olive M Rinaldi2, Laurel J Trainor2,3,4
1Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada. pazderaj@mcmaster.ca.
Scientific Reports
|May 21, 2026
Summary
The brain integrates sound pitch and timing, influencing how we perceive both. This study shows that a sound
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Psychoacoustics
- Cognitive neuroscience
Background:
- The brain is hypothesized to integrate pitch and timing cues in auditory perception.
- Previous research suggests higher-pitched sounds are perceived as faster.
- The current study explores if timing influences perceived pitch.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if sounds arriving earlier or later than expected are perceived as higher or lower in pitch.
- To determine if timing-induced pitch bias strengthens under low discriminability conditions.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Participants judged pitch changes in probe tones following isochronous standard tones.
- Experiment 2: An adaptive procedure assessed bias under varying pitch discriminability.
Main Results:
- A significant bias was observed: later probe tones were perceived as lower in pitch.
- Responses to mistimed probes, consistent with the bias, were faster.
- No evidence was found that bias magnitude correlates with pitch change or individual sensitivity.
Conclusions:
- Results support the hypothesis of perceptual integration between pitch and timing.
- This integration may be learned from real-world sound source properties.
- A Bayesian predictive coding framework is proposed for this integration.
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