Reduced contribution of a nonsimultaneous mistuned harmonic to residue pitch: the role of harmonic number.

Listeners adjusted a matching sound so that its pitch equaled that of a subsequent 90-ms complex tone (12 harmonics of a 155-Hz F0), whose mistuned harmonic (+/-3%) was presented either simultaneously with or after the other harmonics. The third or the fourth harmonic was mistuned. For both harmonics, pitch shifts were significantly smaller when the mistuned harmonic was presented after rather than simultaneously with the remainder of the target complex and when the component corresponding to the mistuned harmonic was absent (as opposed to present) from the matching sound. Presenting the mistuned component after the remainder of the complex generally reduced the pitch shifts more for the third than for the fourth harmonic; the nonsimultaneous presentation reduced shifts by a factor of 2.8 (third) and 1.7 (fourth) in the presence, and 6.4 (third) and 1.9 (fourth) in the absence of the nominally mistuned harmonic from the matching sound. The results are discussed in terms of an analytical listening and matching strategy that results in larger pitch shifts for a nonsimultaneous mistuned harmonic that has an octave or double-octave relationship to the F0 than for one that does not, without it necessarily being temporally integrated into the residue pitch of the complex.