Perception Of Pitch Contours Research Articles

Music and Speech Perception in Prelingually Deafened Young Listeners With Cochlear Implants: A Preliminary Study Using Sung Speech.

In the context of music and speech perception, this study aimed to assess the effect of variation in one of two auditory attributes-pitch contour and timbre-on the perception of the other in prelingually deafened young cochlear implant (CI) users, and the relationship between pitch contour perception and two cognitive functions of interest. Nine prelingually deafened CI users, aged 8.75-22.17 years, completed a melodic contour identification (MCI) task using stimuli of piano notes or sung speech with a fixed timbre (same word for each note) or a mixed timbre (different words for each note), a speech perception task identifying matrix-styled sentences naturally intonated or sung with a fixed pitch (same pitch for each word) or a mixed pitch (different pitches for each word), a forward digit span test indexing auditory short-term memory (STM), and the matrices section of the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test-Second Edition indexing nonverbal IQ. MCI was significantly poorer for the mixed timbre condition. Speech perception was significantly poorer for the fixed and mixed pitch conditions than for the naturally intonated condition. Auditory STM positively correlated with MCI at 2- and 3-semitone note spacings. Relative to their normal-hearing peers from a related study using the same stimuli and tasks, the CI participants showed comparable MCI at 2- or 3-semitone note spacing, and a comparable level of significant decrement in speech perception across three pitch contour conditions. Findings suggest that prelingually deafened CI users show similar trends of normal-hearing peers for the effect of variation in pitch contour or timbre on the perception of the other, and that cognitive functions may underlie these outcomes to some extent, at least for the perception of pitch contour. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21217937.

Categorical Perception of Pitch Contours and Voice Onset Time in Mandarin-Speaking Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.

Early cortical processing of pitch height and the role of adaptation and musicality

Pitch is an important perceptual feature; however, it is poorly understood how its cortical correlates are shaped by absolute vs relative fundamental frequency (f0), and by neural adaptation. In this study, we assessed transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEFs) at the onset, progression, and offset of short pitch height sequences, taking into account the listener's musicality. We show that neuromagnetic activity reflects absolute f0 at pitch onset and offset, and relative f0 at transitions within pitch sequences; further, sequences with fixed f0 lead to larger response suppression than sequences with variable f0 contour, and to enhanced offset activity. Musical listeners exhibit stronger f0-related AEFs and larger differences between their responses to fixed vs variable sequences, both within sequences and at pitch offset. The results resemble prominent psychoacoustic phenomena in the perception of pitch contours; moreover, they suggest a strong influence of adaptive mechanisms on cortical pitch processing which, in turn, might be modulated by a listener's musical expertise.

How musical experience affects tone perception efficiency by musicians of tonal and non-tonal speakers?

PurposeTo investigate if, regardless of language background (tonal or non-tonal), musicians may show stronger CP than non-musicians; To examine if native speakers of English (English or non-tonal musicians henceforth) or Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin or tonal musicians henceforth) can better accommodate multiple functions of the same acoustic cue and if musicians’ sensitivity to pitch of lexical tones comes at the cost of slower processing.MethodEnglish and Mandarin Musicians and non-musicians performed a categorical identification and a discrimination task on rising and falling continua of fundamental frequency on two vowels with 9 duration values.ResultsNon-tonal musicians exhibited significantly stronger categorical perception of pitch contour than non-tonal non-musicians. However, tonal musicians did not consistently perceive the two types of pitch directions more categorically than tonal non-musicians. Both tonal and non-tonal musicians also benefited more from increasing stimulus duration in processing pitch changes than non-musicians and they generally require less time for pitch processing. Musicians were also more sensitive to intrinsic F0 in pitch perception and differences of pitch types.ConclusionThe effect of musical training strengthens categorical perception more consistently in non-tonal speakers than tonal speakers. Overall, musicians benefit more from increased stimulus duration, due perhaps to their greater sensitivity to temporal information, thus allowing them to be better at forming a more robust auditory representation and matching sounds to internalized memory templates. Musicians also attended more to acoustic details such as intrinsic F0 and pitch types in pitch processing, and yet, overall, their categorization of pitch was not compromised by traces of these acoustic details from their auditory short-term working memory. These findings may lead to a better understanding of pitch perception deficits in special populations, particularly among individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The effect of language experience on lexical tone perception

Language experience has often shown to affect speech perception at segmental levels (Holt, 2010). Whether and how language experience affect perception of suprasegmental elements is often subject to dispute (Xu et al., 2006; Peng, 2016). The current study focused on the identification and discrimination of Mandarin lexical tones by 3 groups of listeners, namely, 15 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese (tonal language), 15 native speakers of Lao (tonal language), and 15 native speakers of Uzbek (non-tonal language). We ask (1) whether experience with lexical tones (tonal vs. non-tonal) affects categorical perception of pitch contours; (2) whether differences in native tone inventories (Mandarin vs. Lao) affect pitch perception. Stimuli were 7 monosyllabic snippets resynthesized from a natural Mandarin speech sample. The stimuli represented a physical continuum of pitch contours ranging from a Mandarin level to a Mandarin rising tone. Preliminary results show a strong categorical perception of pitch contours for Mandarin speakers than for Lao and Uzbek speakers, and Lao speakers exhibited stronger categorical perception of pitch contours than Uzbek speakers. The results indicate that lexical tone perception is affected by both the experience with tonal languages and one’s native tone inventory.

Noninvasive brain stimulation to facilitate foreign language speech-sound learning in low-aptitude learners

Native English speakers with poor pitch-contour identification abilities also have a low aptitude for learning lexical tones, as in Mandarin Chinese. In a four-day training paradigm, native English-speaking young adults with low pitch-contour perception abilities learned a vocabulary incorporating minimal contrasts based on lexical tones (with level, rising, and falling contours), in which they matched spoken words to photographs of objects. Participants were assigned to two groups: The “stimulation” group received anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over left inferior frontal lobe at 2mA during training; the “sham” group underwent an identical set-up procedure each session, but did not receive brain stimulation during training. Participants' learning trajectories, learning attainment, and ability to generalize word recognition to novel talkers were compared between groups and to previously published training data from both low- and high-aptitude learners. Active brain stimulation improved learning for some, but not all, low-aptitude learners. Some low-aptitude learners who received brain stimulation performed as well as high-aptitude learners in previous studies. Low-aptitude learners who received sham stimulation learned no better than in previous studies. These results suggest noninvasive brain stimulation may help recover speech-sound learning abilities in listeners with low pre-training perceptual aptitude.

Top-Down Modulation on the Perception and Categorization of Identical Pitch Contours in Speech and Music.

Whether pitch in language and music is governed by domain-specific or domain-general cognitive mechanisms is contentiously debated. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether mechanisms governing pitch contour perception operate differently when pitch information is interpreted as either speech or music. By modulating listening mode, this study aspired to demonstrate that pitch contour perception relies on domain-specific cognitive mechanisms, which are regulated by top–down influences from language and music. Three groups of participants (Mandarin speakers, Dutch speaking non-musicians, and Dutch musicians) were exposed to identical pitch contours, and tested on their ability to identify these contours in a language and musical context. Stimuli consisted of disyllabic words spoken in Mandarin, and melodic tonal analogs, embedded in a linguistic and melodic carrier phrase, respectively. Participants classified identical pitch contours as significantly different depending on listening mode. Top–down influences from language appeared to alter the perception of pitch contour in speakers of Mandarin. This was not the case for non-musician speakers of Dutch. Moreover, this effect was lacking in Dutch speaking musicians. The classification patterns of pitch contours in language and music seem to suggest that domain-specific categorization is modulated by top–down influences from language and music.

Impaired pitch identification as a potential marker for depression

BackgroundImpaired auditory performance has been considered as marker for depression. The present study tested whether pitch perception is affected in depression and whether the impairment is task-specific or reflects global dysfunction.MethodsTwelve depressive in-patients and 12 non-depressive participants, half of the sample women, volunteered. The participants performed pitch identification using a four-choice reaction task, pitch contour perception, and pitch discrimination.ResultsDuring pitch identification but not during pitch contour perception or pitch discrimination, depressive patients responded less accurate than non-depressive participants (F = 3.3, p = 0.047). An analysis of covariates revealed that only female but not male depressive patients identified pitches poorly (Z = −2.2, p = 0.025) and inaccurate pitch identification correlated with high scores in the Beck Depression Inventory in women (r = −0.8, p = 0.001) but not in men (r = −0.1, p = 0.745). Patients did not differ from controls in reaction time or responsiveness.ConclusionsImpaired pitch perception in depression is task-specific. Therefore, cognitive deficits in depression are circumscribed and not global. Reduced pitch identification in depression was associated with female sex. We suggest that impaired pitch identification merits attention as a potential marker for depression in women.

The correlation of inductive reasoning with multi-dimensional perception

Intelligence correlated with perception in previous studies. The aim of this investigation was to specify the relationship between inductive reasoning and perception. For this purpose, 125 healthy adults performed the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices as measure of inductive reasoning and six perception tasks. Inductive reasoning correlated with simultaneous perception of locus and pitch (r=.29, p<.001) and with perception of four distinct colors (r=.32, p<.001). Inductive reasoning was not significantly associated with pitch discrimination, pitch contour perception after partialing out effects of covariates, pitch identification, and visual localization. Inductive reasoning, locus-pitch perception, and color perception required the processing of unrelated categories. Therefore, inductive reasoning and the correlating perception skills may share multi-dimensional mental representation. This multi-dimensional representation may differ from one-dimensional scales such as pitch. The findings suggest a differentiation of pre-semantic cognitions and its interactions with perception.

Tonal language background and detecting pitch contour in spoken and musical items

An experiment investigated the effect of tonal language background on discrimination of pitch contour in short spoken and musical items. It was hypothesized that extensive exposure to a tonal language attunes perception of pitch contour. Accuracy and reaction times of adult participants from tonal (Thai) and non-tonal (Australian English) language backgrounds were recorded as they discriminated intact and low-pass filtered Thai and English items that differed in rising/falling contour (speech task), and musical items that differed in rising/falling contour, major/minor interval, and contour plus interval features (music task). As hypothesized, the tonal language group was significantly faster and more accurate at discriminating intact speech items on the basis of pitch contour. The tonal language group was also significantly faster in response to musical contour and intervals, although accuracy was equivalent across language groups. The results provide some support for the contention that a tonal language environment fosters perceptual attunement to contour in spoken items and this can generalize to relatively fast responding to contour in a more musical setting.

Numeric aspects in pitch identification: an fMRI study

BackgroundPitch identification had yielded unique response patterns compared to other auditory skills. Selecting one out of numerous pitches distinguished this task from detecting a pitch ascent. Encoding of numerous stimuli had activated the intraparietal sulcus in the visual domain. Therefore, we hypothesized that numerosity encoding during pitch identification activates the intraparietal sulcus as well.MethodsTo assess pitch identification, the participants had to recognize a single pitch from a set of four possible pitches in each trial. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) disentangled neural activation during this four-pitch-choice task from activation during pitch contour perception, tone localization, and pitch discrimination.ResultsPitch identification induced bilateral activation in the intraparietal sulcus compared to pitch discrimination. Correct responses in pitch identification correlated with activation in the left intraparietal sulcus. Pitch contour perception activated the superior temporal gyrus conceivably due to the larger range of presented tones. The differentiation between pitch identification and tone localization failed. Activation in an ACC-hippocampus network distinguished pitch discrimination from pitch identification.ConclusionPitch identification is distinguishable from pitch discrimination on the base of activation in the IPS. IPS activity during pitch identification may be the auditory counterpart of numerosity encoding in the visual domain.

Effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception

This study examined the effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception among speakers of a non-tonal language. Fifteen musicians and fifteen non-musicians from various non-tonal language backgrounds were administered pitch contour categorial discrimination baseline task before and after a two-day pitch contour identification training. Although musicians were relatively more accurate than non-musicians in pitch contour identification, their pitch contour abstraction and categorization ability was comparable to that of non-musicians. Pitch contour identification training improved both pitch contour identification and pitch contour abstraction and categorization abilities to the same degree in musicians and non-musicians. In addition, the advantage of the rising pitch contour over the falling pitch contour was observed in both tasks and among both groups of participants. Together, these results suggest that musical experience sharpened the perception of pitch among musicians, but that the auditory systems of both groups are experience-dependent and comparably malleable.

The influence of language experience on categorical perception of pitch contours

Previous research on categorical perception of pitch contours has mainly considered the contrast between tone language and non-tone language listeners. This study investigates not only the influence of tone language vs. non-tone language experience (German vs. Chinese), but also the influence of different tone inventories (Mandarin tones vs. Cantonese tones), on the categorical perception of pitch contours. The results show that the positions of the identification boundaries do not differ significantly across the 3 groups of listeners, i.e., Mandarin, Cantonese, and German, but that the boundary widths do differ significantly between tone language (Mandarin and Cantonese) listeners and non-tone language (German) listeners, with broader boundary widths for non-tone language listeners. In the discrimination tasks, the German listeners exhibit only psychophysical boundaries, whereas Chinese listeners exhibit linguistic boundaries, and these linguistic boundaries are further shaped by the different tone inventories.

Developmental changes in the perception of pitch contour: Distinguishing up from down

Musically untrained participants in five age groups (5-, 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds, and adults) heard sequences of three 1 s piano tones in which the first and third tones were identical (A5, or 880 Hz) but the middle tone was displaced upward or downward in pitch. Their task was to identify whether the middle tone was higher or lower than the other two tones. In experiment 1, 5-year-olds successfully identified upward and downward shifts of 4, 2, 1, 0.5, and 0.3 semitones. In experiment 2, older children (6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds) and adults successfully identified the same shifts as well as a smaller shift (0.1 semitone). For all age groups, performance accuracy decreased as the size of the shift decreased. Performance improved from 5 to 8 years of age, reaching adult levels at 8 years.

Differential Skills of Perception of Frequency

This study aimed to develop tests for differentiating auditory perception skills, e.g., to test drug effects. In Exp. 1 (N = 60), discrimination of succeeding frequencies, frequency identification assessed by a choice reaction task, and the perception of pitch contour assessed by frequency deviants in binaural melodies showed zero partial correlations. In Exp. 2 (N = 36), discrimination correlated with performance on a field dependence test; fast frequency identification correlated with verbal fluency. The auditory tests are likely suitable for assessing distinct skills, but correlations with general cognitive abilities require further investigations.

The music of speech: Music training facilitates pitch processing in both music and language

The main aim of the present experiment was to determine whether extensive musical training facilitates pitch contour processing not only in music but also in language. We used a parametric manipulation of final notes' or words' fundamental frequency (F0), and we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological data to examine the precise time course of pitch processing. We compared professional musicians and nonmusicians. Results revealed that within both domains, musicians detected weak F0 manipulations better than nonmusicians. Moreover, F0 manipulations within both music and language elicited similar variations in brain electrical potentials, with overall shorter onset latency for musicians than for nonmusicians. Finally, the scalp distribution of an early negativity in the linguistic task varied with musical expertise, being largest over temporal sites bilaterally for musicians and largest centrally and over left temporal sites for nonmusicians. These results are taken as evidence that extensive musical training influences the perception of pitch contour in spoken language.

Training Improves Acoustic Pattern Perception

Pitch changes that occur in speech and melodies can be described in terms of contour patterns of rises and falls in pitch and the actual pitches at each point in time. This study investigates whether training can improve the perception of these different features. One group of ten adults trained on a pitch-contour discrimination task, a second group trained on an actual-pitch discrimination task, and a third group trained on a contour comparison task between pitch sequences and their visual analogs. A fourth group did not undergo training. It was found that training on pitch sequence comparison tasks gave rise to improvements in pitch-contour perception. This occurred irrespective of whether the training task required the discrimination of contour patterns or the actual pitch details. In contrast, none of the training tasks were found to improve the perception of the actual pitches in a sequence. The results support psychological models of pitch processing where contour processing is an initial step before actual pitch details are analyzed [1, 2]. Further studies are required to determine whether pitch-contour training is effective in improving speech and melody perception.

The Combinatorial Model of Pitch Contour

Much previous work on the perception of pitch contour has concerned itself only with the contour relations among adjacent notes, which may lead to the assumption that relations among nonadjacent tones do not play a role in the mental representation of contour. Music theorists, on the other hand, have developed sophisticated models of contour in which relations among nonadjacent tones play an integral part. In order to test the salience of relations among nonadjacent melodic tones in the perception of melodic contour, musically trained participants were asked to rate the similarity of discrete pairs of stimulus melodies with regard to contour. The results suggest that although contour relations among adjacent tones are more significant than those among nonadjacent tones in determining judgments about contour similarity, nonadjacent contour relations do contribute to such judgments.

Perception of pitch contours in single words in alaryngeal speech

The perception and production of pitch contours were investigated in single words produced by two groups of alaryngeal speakers: tracheo-oesophageal (TE) and oesophageal (E) speakers. High quality tape-recordings of three tonal patterns by four oesophageal and eight tracheo-oesophageal speakers in monosyllabic words were judged by a group of six speech and language therapy listeners. The results indicated that tonal patterns can be produced with a relatively high level of reliability for both speaker groups. Some individual speakers from both groups approached predicted normal levels. These findings emphasise the importance of providing the opportunity for patients to acquire either of these speech modes in alaryngeal rehabilitation, rather than simply being provided with an artificial larynx, particularly in countries where tone languages are used. The high variability between groups also suggests that other variables apart from alaryngeal speech mode may be relevant in determining ability to signal tonal patterns.