Interaural and monaural clicks and clocks: tempo difference versus attention switching

Area of Science:

• Auditory Perception
• Psychoacoustics
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Accurate auditory sequence counting is crucial for understanding temporal processing.
• Previous models struggled to explain both interaural and monaural click sequence counting results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a unified quantitative model for auditory sequence counting.
• To explain discrepancies in perceived timing between interaural and monaural auditory events.

Main Methods:

• Reanalyzed existing data on apparent repetition rates.
• Derived counting times from numerosity judgments.
• Analyzed observer response times to sequence termination.

Main Results:

• Developed a three-component model: stimulus clock, memory clock, and counting clock.
• Demonstrated perceived onset asynchrony (POA) is 24 msec longer for interaural events compared to monaural events.
• Empirically deduced transfer functions between model components.

Conclusions:

• The proposed model successfully explains all reported interaural and monaural click sequence counting data.
• Alternative explanations like attention switching were refuted.
• The model provides a robust framework for understanding auditory temporal perception and counting.