Perception of clicks in music.

Abstract

Subjects were asked to judge the position of a click which occurred during a short piece of music. Clicks were on average judged to be later than their actual position for a slow tune, but almost no bias in the judgement of click position was found for a fast tune. The click and the music were presented through headphones to different ears, and the clicks were judged to be significantly later if they arrived at the right ear rather than the left. There was also a significant tendency for clicks to be attracted to phrase boundaries in the music. These last two results are similar to those from experiments with a click during speech, but the late judgements of a click in music contrasts with the tendency for early judgements of a click in speech.