Abstract

Two experiments on the internal representation of auditory stimuli compared the pairwise and grouping methodologies as means of deriving similarity judgements. A total of 45 undergraduate students participated in each experiment, judging the similarity of short auditory stimuli, using one of the methodologies. The experiments support and extend Bonebright's (1996) findings, using a further 60 stimuli. Results from both methodologies highlight the importance of category information and acoustic features, such as root mean square (RMS) power and pitch, in similarity judgements. Results showed that the grouping task is a viable alternative to the pairwise task with N > 20 sounds whilst highlighting subtle differences, such as cluster tightness, between the different task results. The grouping task is more likely to yield category information as underlying similarity judgements.

DOI

10.1080/17470210701814451

Publication Date

2009-01-01

Publication Title

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Volume

62

Issue

1

Publisher

SAGE Publications

ISSN

1747-0226

Embargo Period

2024-11-22

First Page

63

Last Page

83

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