Musicians do not benefit from differences in fundamental frequency when listening to speech in competing speech backgrounds

Sara M K Madsen,Andrew J Oxenham,Kelly L Whiteford

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12937-9

Sara M K Madsen, Andrew J Oxenham + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-12937-9

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Abstract

Recent studies disagree on whether musicians have an advantage over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise. However, it has been suggested that musicians may be able to use differences in fundamental frequency (F0) to better understand target speech in the presence of interfering talkers. Here we studied a relatively large (N = 60) cohort of young adults, equally divided between non-musicians and highly trained musicians, to test whether the musicians were better able to understand speech either in noise or in a two-talker competing speech masker. The target speech and competing speech were presented with either their natural F0 contours or on a monotone F0, and the F0 difference between the target and masker was systematically varied. As expected, speech intelligibility improved with increasing F0 difference between the target and the two-talker masker for both natural and monotone speech. However, no significant intelligibility advantage was observed for musicians over non-musicians in any condition. Although F0 discrimination was significantly better for musicians than for non-musicians, it was not correlated with speech scores. Overall, the results do not support the hypothesis that musical training leads to improved speech intelligibility in complex speech or noise backgrounds.

Highlights

Musical training can enhance some abilities related to music, such as pitch[1,2,3,4], rhythm[5,6], and melody[7] discrimination
The results from our study suggest no clear benefit of musical training on speech perception in any of the conditions tested, and no relationship with F0 discrimination abilities
The lack of effect of musical training on the improvement in performance with increasing F0 difference between the target and maskers is consistent with the findings of Baskent and Gaudrain[19]

Summary

Introduction

Musical training can enhance some abilities related to music, such as pitch[1,2,3,4], rhythm[5,6], and melody[7] discrimination. Two studies using the same test, and some of the same participants, with speech sentence materials taken from a closed (matrix) set of words for both the target and two maskers[21,22], found no group differences when the maskers and targets were co-located in front of the listener, but a significant advantage for the musician group when the target was presented from the front and the maskers were presented at ±15° for conditions with natural speech maskers In reviewing this mixed literature, no clear pattern emerges to explain why some studies find small but significant effects, whereas others do not. If musicians are better able to make use of small differences in F0 between competing speakers, their advantage should be greatest at small F0 differences between the speakers, and should be related to their ability to discriminate small differences in F0 These predictions were tested by measuring musicians’ and non-musicians’ speech intelligibility in the presence of two-talker maskers and speech-shaped noise. The results from our study suggest no clear benefit of musical training on speech perception in any of the conditions tested, and no relationship with F0 discrimination abilities

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