Dr. Schutz now has an article in press in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) in collaboration with Dr. Jeanine Stefanucci (University of Utah), Sarah Baum and Amber Roth (College of William & Mary). This study explores the role of amplitude envelope in learning and memory, identifying considerations important in designing auditory and associative memory psychological research.
The study focused on comparing the differences between “flat”, “percussive”, and “reverse percussive” tones (see our demo for an example). Through a number of different experiments, participants were asked to learn associations between physical objects and one of the three types of tones. They hypothesized that participants hearing percussive tones would have better recall performance when remembering those object-sound associations than when hearing reverse-percussive or flat tones. Throughout four experiments, participants hearing percussive tones repeatedly outperformed participants hearing flat or reverse percussive tones.