This study was designed to investigate listener discrimination of modulated intensity. Synthesizer music, previously recorded music excerpts, and electronic tones with gradual increases, decreases, or no change in intensity were presented to 108 subjects, 54 musicians and 54 nonmusicians. The total amount of stimulus modulation for both increase and decrease conditions was 12 dB(A) at the rate of 1 dB per second, well above the relative threshold level The time (in seconds) necessary for correct judgments of intensity change served as the dependent measure.
Musicians did not differ from nonmusician subjects in the number of correct discriminations nor in latency of correct responses. An analysis of response time demonstrated a significant effect of modulation direction. Subjects correctly discriminated intensity modulation decreases sooner than intensity increases. There were, however, significant interactions between stimulus examples and modulation conditions. Results are discussed in relation to a series of studies concerning temporal modulations within musical contexts.
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