An illusory transfer of temporal gaps between crossing tones

Abstract

When a long ascending tone with a temporal gap in the middle and a short continuous descending tone cross each other, a long continuous ascending tone and a short descending tone are often perceived with a temporal gap in the middle. This is an illusory phenomenon because the physical temporal gap of the ascending tone seems to be transferred to the descending tone perceptually. This phenomenon was named ‘‘the gap transfer illusion.’’ Many related stimulus patterns were compared which confirmed the robustness of this illusion. An onset and a proximate termination tended to be connected to each other perceptually, forming an auditory event. The proximity of the temporal dimension seemed more important than the proximity of the frequency dimension. When onsets had no proximate termination, the illusion disappeared. Several new phenomena to which the same idea can be applied were found.