Illusory conjunctions of musical pitch and timbre

Abstract

An experiment addressed perceptual assumptions that have formed the basis of models for auditory feature integration. Musicians searched stimuli containing two lateralized tones for a target timbre and its pitch. Errors representing potential illusory conjunctions exceeded feature misperception errors. Responses were submitted to multinomial models to evaluate the contribution of guessing, illusory conjunctions, and intertone distance. Illusory conjunction models provided the most accurate data fits. Illusory conjunction rates exceeded zero, and were not affected by distance. Implications for feature binding models are discussed.