I haven't published in nor even looked at JASA for several decades, so I am far from current. But evolution of the human auditory system occurs very slowly, over thousands of years. You have to ask yourslef why human hearing, a system evolved for avoidance of danger and communication, would be sensitive to high-order harmonics. What might the teleological explanation be for developing such sensitivity be? For example, we can explain interaural sensitivity to timing and level in the lower frequency range as providing localization cues that could be important for survival. But what value might high-order harmonics add to our lives?
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