Sequential Structure and Context in the Classification of Nonspeech Transient Patterns.
Abstract
Three experiments were conducted to investigate the role of both syntactic (i.e., sequential structure) and semantic (i.e., contextual knowledge of the source events) factors in a two-alternative (target/nontarget) categorization task involving patterns of nonspeech acoustic transients. The results demonstrated that both factors can play an important role in the classification of such patterns. Although pattern syntax influenced performance in all three experiments, the effects of syntactic structure were clearest in Experiment 1 in which listeners categorized meaningless tonal patterns. Listeners who categorized a syntactically structured target set performed better than those with an unstructured set. Experiments 2 and 3 were similar to Experiment 1, but listeners classified patterns of familiar, brief-duration, complex sounds rather than tones. When listeners in Experiment 3 were given explicit descriptive information about the pattern components in their instructions, performance actually improved for interpretable patterns but was slightly degraded for uninterpretable patterns.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 15, 1980
- Accession Number
- ADA087649
Entities
People
- James A. Ballas
- James H. Howard Jr.
Organizations
- The Catholic University of America