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Pitch, time, speech, & tones: Training & attention (Sares et al., 2018)

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posted on 2018-02-20, 23:19 authored by Anastasia G. Sares, Nicholas E. V. Foster, Kachina Allen, Krista L. Hyde
Purpose: Musical training is often linked to enhanced auditory discrimination, but the relative roles of pitch and time in music and speech are unclear. Moreover, it is unclear whether pitch and time processing are correlated across individuals and how they may be affected by attention. This study aimed to examine pitch and time processing in speech and tone sequences, taking musical training and attention into account.
Method: Musicians (16) and nonmusicians (16) were asked to detect pitch or timing changes in speech and tone sequences and make a binary response. In some conditions, the participants were focused on 1 aspect of the stimulus (directed attention), and in others, they had to pay attention to all aspects at once (divided attention).
Results: As expected, musicians performed better overall. Performance scores on pitch and time tasks were correlated, as were performance scores for speech and tonal stimuli, but most markedly in musicians. All participants performed better on the directed versus divided attention task, but again, musicians performed better than nonmusicians.
Conclusion: In general, this experiment shows that individuals with a better sense of pitch discrimination also have a better sense of timing discrimination in the auditory domain. In addition, although musicians perform better overall, these results do not support the idea that musicians have an added advantage for divided attention tasks. These findings serve to better understand how musical training and attention affect pitch and time processing in the context of speech and tones and may have applications in special populations.

Supplemental Material S1. Speech stimulus "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Lowest level of pitch modulation (purple line in main article's Figure 1, top panel). 700 ms gap after the word "green."

Supplemental Material S2. Speech stimulus "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Second level of pitch modulation (yellow line in main article's Figure 1, top panel). 700 ms gap after the word "green."

Supplemental Material S3. Speech stimulus "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Third level of pitch modulation (orange line in main article's Figure 1, top panel). 700 ms gap after the word "green."

Supplemental Material S4. Speech stimulus "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Highest level of pitch modulation (blue line in main article's Figure 1, top panel). 700 ms gap after the word "green."

Supplemental Material S5. Music stimulus corresponding to "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Lowest level of pitch modulation (purple line in main article's Figure 1, bottom panel). 700 ms gap after 3rd tone (corresponding to the word "green").

Supplemental Material S6. Music stimulus corresponding to "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Second level of pitch modulation (yellow line in main article's Figure 1, bottom panel). 700 ms gap after 3rd tone (corresponding to the word "green").

Supplemental Material S7. Music stimulus corresponding to "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Third level of pitch modulation (orange line in main article's Figure 1, bottom panel). 700 ms gap after 3rd tone (corresponding to the word "green").

Supplemental Material S8. Music stimulus corresponding to "Scott built green and blue and red planes." Highest level of pitch modulation (blue line in main article's Figure 1, bottom panel). 700 ms gap after 3rd tone (corresponding to the word "green").

Sares, A. G., Foster, N. E. V., Allen, K., & Hyde, K. L. (2018). Pitch and time processing in speech and tones: The effects of musical training and attention. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 496–509. https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-17-0207

Funding

This work was funded by a CIHR grant to Krista L. Hyde.

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