Perception of just-noticeable time displacement of a tone presented in a metrical sequence at different tempos

The jnd for a perturbation of the timing of a tone appearing in a metrical sequence was examined in an experiment, where 30 listeners of varied musical background were asked to adjust the timing of the fourth tone in a sequence of six, such that they heard the sequence as perfectly regular. The tones were presented at a constant interonset time that was varied between 100 and 1000 ms. The average jnd was found to be about 10 ms for tones shorter than about 240-ms duration and about 5% of the duration for longer tones. Subjects’ musical training did not appear to affect these values.