Comparing musicians’ and non-musicians’ ability to make use of F0 differences between competing talkers in natural and monotone speech

Abstract

Recent studies disagree on whether musicians have an advantage over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise. This study tested the hypothesis that better fundamental-frequency (F0) discrimination enables musicians to make better use of F0 differences between competing talkers. Sentence intelligibility was measured in a background of noise or two competing talkers, where the target and background speech were natural or monotonized. Participants were also tested with the Vocabulary and Matrix Reasoning subtests of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence. As expected, speech intelligibility improved with increasing F0 difference between the target and the two maskers for both natural and monotone speech. However, no significant intelligibility advantage in speech was observed for musicians over non-musicians in any condition. F0 discrimination was significantly better for musicians than for non-musicians. Scores in the IQ test did not differ significantly between groups. Overall, the results do not support the hypothesis that musical training leads to improved speech intelligibility in speech or noise backgrounds. [Work supported by NIH grant R01DC005216, the Carlsberg, Augustinus, P.A. Fisker, and Knud Højgaard Foundations.]