The perception of concurrent sound objects through the use of harmonic enhancement: a study of auditory attention

When the frequency of one harmonic, in a sound composed of many harmonics, is briefly mistuned and then returned to the ‘in-tune’ frequency and phase, observers report hearing this harmonic as a separate tone long after the brief period of mistuning – a phenomenon called harmonic enhancement. Here, we examined the consequence of harmonic enhancement on listeners’ ability to detect a brief amplitude notch embedded in one of the harmonics after the period of mistuning. When present, the notch was either on the enhanced harmonic or on a different harmonic. Detection was better on the enhanced harmonic than on a non-enhanced harmonic. This finding suggests that attention was drawn to the enhanced harmonic (which constituted a new sound object) thereby easing the processing of sound features (i.e., a notch) within that object. This is the first evidence of a functional consequence of the after-effect of transient mistuning on auditory perception. Moreover, the findings provide support for an attention-based explanation of the enhancement phenomenon.