Auditory discrimination of diel variations for natural soundscapes: Role of spectral and temporal information

Psychophysical work suggested that humans discriminate diel changes in natural soundscapes based on spectral cues. The present study extended this investigation by assessing human discrimination for diel variations in natural soundscapes using a database of scenes recorded in three distinct habitats (two temperate forests and a tropical forest) marginally affected by human activity and processed by a multi-band noise vocoder to degrade selectively spectral and temporal cues. The results confirm that auditory sensitivity to diel variations is high and is only affected by degradations to spectral cues. They also indicate that the resolution of these spectral cues depends on habitat.