Abstract

Perceptual centres (p-centres) are the subjective moments of occurrence of acoustic stimuli. When sounds are perceived in synchrony or are regularly spaced, it is their p-centres which occur synchronously or are isochronous. In order to analyse or model the acoustic features which influence the p-centre, it is necessary to measure p-centres for many stimuli. However there is a problem: it is difficult for an external observer to determine the exact time at which a listener perceives a sound’s occurrence. A possible solution is to find a measurable electrophysiological correlate of the p-centre. In order to investigate this, an experiment is described which compares features of the Auditory Evoked Potential (AEP) response and p-centres for a number of speech and synthetic stimuli. The results indicate a correlation between the latency of the dominant negative peak of the AEP and the p-centre.