Page 231 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

236 Albert S. Bregman

asked to play their oscillators in rapid alternation. If this were the way the
sound had been created, the correct perceptual analysis would be to hear a
pure tone alternating with a rich-sounding complex tone. This, however, is only
one possibility for the origin of the sound. The second is that we have given out
oscillators, as before, to two persons. This time, however, both of the oscillators
can put out only pure tones. One person is told to sound his instrument twice
on each cycle to make the tones A and B, whereas the other is told to play his
tone only once on each cycle to make the tone C. He is told to synchronize his C
tone with the B tone of his partner. If our auditory systems were to correctly
represent the true causes of the sound in this second case, we should hear two
streams: one consisting of the repetitions of tones A and B, accompanied by a
second that contains only the repetitions of tone C. In this way of hearing the
sequence, there should be no rich tone BC because the richness is an accidental
by-product of the mixture of two signals. If the auditory system is built to hear
the properties of meaningful events rather than of the accidental by-products of
mixtures, it should discard the latter.
Theexperimentshowedthatitwas possibletohearthe sequenceineither
way, depending on two factors. The first was the frequency proximity of tones
A and B. The closer they were to one another in frequency, the greater the
likelihood of hearing A and B as forming a single stream separate from C. Ap-
parently the auditory system uses the proximity of a succession of frequencies,
much as it does in the case of the streaming phenomenon, as evidence that they
are from a common source. The second factor was the synchrony of tones B and
C. If their onsets and offsets were synchronized, they tended to be fused and
heard as a single complex sound BC, which was heard as alternating with A.
Furthermore, the effects of the BC synchrony were competitive with the effects
of the AB frequency proximity. It was as if A and C were competing to see
which one would get to group with C. If the synchrony of C with B was reduced,
B would be more likely to group with A, unless, of course, the AB connection
was made weaker by moving A further away in frequency from B.
Horizontal and Vertical Processes of Organization
There is a distinction that ought to be made now because it follows directly
from the Bregman-Pinker experiment. This is the distinction between the pro-
cesses of sequential and spectral integration.
The process of putting A and B together into a stream can be referred to as
sequential integration. This is the kind of integration that forms the melodic
componentof music.Itisthe processthatconnectseventsthathavearisenat
different times from the same source. It uses the changes in the spectrum and
the speed of such changes as major clues to the correct grouping. The sequen-
tial process is what is involved in the streaming effect that was discussed earlier.
The fusing of B with C into a single sound is what will be referred to as
simultaneous integration or, in special contexts, as spectral integration, a term
borrowed from James Cutting. 12 It is this process that takes acoustic inputs that
occur at the same time, but at different places in the spectrum or in space, and
treats them as properties of a single sound. It is responsible for the fact that we
can interpret a single spectrum of sound as arising from the mixture of two or
more sound sources, with the timbre of each one being computed from just