Talker adaptation or “talker” adaptation? Musical instrument variability impedes pitch perception

Abstract

When perceiving speech spoken by a single talker versus multiple talkers, listeners show perceptual benefits such as increased accuracy and/or decreased response time. There are several theoretical explanations for this talker adaptation phenomenon; one way to distinguish among these is to test whether adapting to stimulus structure is speech-specific or general to auditory perception. Music, like speech, is a sound class replete with acoustic variation. Here, participants completed a musical task that mirrored talker adaptation paradigms. On each trial, participants heard a tone and reported whether it was the lower (D4, 294 Hz) or higher pitched tone (F#4, 370 Hz). Tones were presented in a single- or mixed-instrument block. We predicted that perceptual benefits from structure in the acoustic signal are not specific to speech but are a general auditory response. Accordingly, we hypothesized participants would respond faster in the single-instrument block, consistent with speech studies that used a similar paradigm. Pitch judgments were faster (and more accurate) in the single instrument block, parallel to results from talker adaptation studies. In agreement with general theoretical approaches to auditory perception, perceptual benefits from signal structure are not limited to speech.