Figure 1.

Stimulus excerpt illustrating the pitch of the missing fundamental. Three standard tone pairs are shown followed by a deviant tone pair, followed by three additional standard tone pairs. Each tone (gray bar) in each standard tone pair was comprised of 10 sine-wave frequency components chosen from the first 15 components (components are shown by the horizontal black lines in the gray bars). Deviant tone pairs were similar to standards in that both tones contained 10 components, each of which increased in frequency from the first to the second tone of the pair. However, in deviant stimuli, all components of the second tone were integer multiples of a missing fundamental that was lower in pitch than the f₀ of the first tone of the pair (shown as the dotted horizontal line). Thus, if the pitch of the missing fundamental was processed, the perceived pitch decreased between the two tones on deviant trials (dotted arrow), whereas it always increased on standard trials (solid arrows).