Learning to discriminate frequency modulation rate can benefit and worsen pitch acuity

Abstract

Participants were trained to discriminate frequency modulation rates (FM-rate training) or Gabor patch orientations (visual training) in a same–different task for two different training lengths. Test discriminations involved trains of FM sweeps with identical modulation rates, but different frequencies. FM-rate training enhanced test accuracy (relative to visual) when sweep trains contained frequencies similar to training. For extended FM-rate training, the opposite was true for trains shifted one octave higher. In contrast to previous work, generalization of learning to the untrained dimension (pitch) was not well accounted for by conceptual learning. Mechanisms of stimulus learning may better explain the current cross-dimensional generalization.