Pitch of components of complex tones

Subjects made pitch matches to individual components in complex tones consisting of either the 4th to 7th or the 1st to 7th harmonics of a 200-Hz fundamental. All components were at equal levels (either 31-, 51-, or 71-dB SPL per component) and the matching pure tone was equal in level to the component being matched. Attention was drawn to the component to be matched either by giving the matching tone an initial frequency close to that of the component (standard condition) or by suppressing and then introducing the component (emergent condition). The pitch matches did not differ significantly for the two conditions, and did not change with overall level. For two subjects, matches to components in the context of the complexes were very close to matches obtained for the components presented in isolation. For a third subject, matches in context were shifted slightly upwards for the lowest component, and downwards for the highest component. A control condition showed that subjects were able accurately to match a small shift in frequency of one component in a four-tone complex. An adaptive forced-choice method described by Jesteadt [Percept. Psychophys. 28, 85-88 (1980)] was also used to estimate the pitches of the components. A very slight bias was apparent in the results, but the pitches of components in context were again found to be very close to those of components in isolation.