Hearing Out Repeating Elements in Randomly Varying Multitone Sequences: A Case of Streaming?

Abstract

One of the most essential functions of perception is to detect and track signals of interest amid other, potentially distracting stimuli. Understanding the mechanisms behind this function is important not just from a theoretical perspective, but also because of its potential applications in artificial scene analysis. An important aspect of auditory scene analysis is the organization of sounds into streams (Bregman 1990). While the vast majority of studies on auditory streaming have used repeating sound sequences, perhaps one of the most informative findings regarding the potential usefulness of streaming in everyday life comes from a study that involved randomly varying tones.