Perception and Memory for Novel Auditory Stimuli: Similarity, Serial Position, and List Homogeneity

We present four experiments that examine perception and memory for a novel set ofauditory stimuli, using multidimensional scaling and cognitive modeling to clarify how peopleperceive and recognize these items. The stimuli are auditory “textures” constructed by adjustingthe distribution of power across upper frequency bands. In Experiment 1, people rated similaritybetween pairs of stimuli; in Experiments 2 and 3, they also engaged in a recognition memorytask using the same stimuli. In Experiment 4, they did all the same tasks from the first threeexperiments, and rated stimuli for distinctiveness. Multidimensional scaling suggested thestimuli were perceived along three dimensions, a result which replicated across all fourexperiments. While recognition performance was affected by similarity, serial position, and listhomogeneity, it was not related to distinctiveness ratings. These effects were accommodated bythe Exemplar-Based Random Walk model (Nosofsky & Palmeri, 1997), extending prior work(Visscher et al., 2007) to show that recognition memory and similarity perception for staticstimuli in the auditory domain are fundamentally like those for static stimuli in the visualdomain—though particularly strong recency effects in the auditory domain suggest the influenceof an additional sensory representation like echoic memory. We conclude by discussing how thestimuli introduced in this article can be used as “building blocks” to test hypotheses aboutperception and memory for complex, naturalistic sounds such as speech or music while retainingtight experimental control.