Experimental Study of “Tone Deafness”

Abstract

In a series of experiments designed to compare the efficiency of human observers in amplitude-discrimination tasks to their efficiency in frequency-discrimination tasks, the behavior of one of the four observers suggested that he was completely insensitive to frequency differences. The procedure of the experiments was then diverted to conduct an experimental case study comparing the “tone deaf” observer to three observers with normal frequency discrimination under a variety of experimental conditions. In amplitude-discrimination experiments in which he is detecting pulses of sine waves, he compares favorably. He far surpasses the other three observers when the signal is a sample of “white Gaussian” noise. An interesting aspect in the experiments reported is that the “tone deafness” of the participating observers suggests the possibility that these particular experiments may reflect culture-bound conditions. A further program is planned that may yield data on the question of the environmental influences on sensory capabilities.