Discrimination of the temporal separation between pairs of sinusoidal bursts

In 1948, Henry [J. Exp. Psychol. 38, 734–743 (1948)] found that duration of pure tones is most discriminable in the 0.5–2‐kHz frequency range. The present study represents an attempt to examine whether frequency effects can be observed also in the discrimination of time intervals marked by two bursts of pure tones, identical in frequency. The frequency of the markers covered a range from 0.5 to 4 and their level was 86 dB SPL. Each tone burst marker had a 20‐msec total duration and its envelope was smoothened so that the major part of the sound energy be kept within the 50‐Hz range surrounding the tonal frequency. Data of three trained listeners, obtained for interburst intervals (t) ranging from 20 to 140 msec, indicate that the logarithm of the interburst interval difference discriminable at threshold (Δtd′=1.0) is a nearly linear function of log t. The slope of this function is close to 0.5 for the 0.5‐ and the 4‐kHz markers, whereas it is approximately 0.8 for the 1‐ and 2‐kHz markers. Pitch differenc...