Detecting our own vocal errors: An event-related study of the thresholds for perceiving and compensating for vocal pitch errors

Scheerer, Nichole E.; Jones, Jeffery A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.12.007

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…However, the sensitivity threshold of participants toward F0 changes in the passive listening task was poorer than during the compensation task (active vocalization), with the smallest threshold equal to 15 cents. Scheerer and Jones 56 argued that the 5 cents difference between the active compensation and passive detection might be due to the involvement of the somatosensory feedback in the active condition and pointed out that inherent variability in the recordings (like in our study) made the perceptual task more difficult when no complementary cues were provided from other modality. Our findings are exactly in line with their conclusion (bottom panels of Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Similar investigations have been conducted to directly highlight the mechanistic link between the ability to detect F0 changes and compensate for them. For example, Scheerer and Jones 56 developed a smart design of a compensation paradigm, by asking participants to vocalize vowel /a/ for 130 times while experiencing unaltered, and F0 manipulated feedback with six occurrences of F0 changes per vocalization (necessarily requiring a brief 200-ms duration for each perturbation). The authors down-shifted the F0 with different sizes of either 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, or 40 cents (but the same size on a given trial).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation to pitch-altered feedback is independent of one’s own voice pitch sensitivity

Alemi

Lehmann

Deroche

2020

Sci Rep

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Monitoring voice pitch is a fine-tuned process in daily conversations as conveying accurately the linguistic and affective cues in a given utterance depends on the precise control of phonation and intonation. This monitoring is thought to depend on whether the error is treated as self-generated or externally-generated, resulting in either a correction or inflation of errors. The present study reports on two separate paradigms of adaptation to altered feedback to explore whether participants could behave in a more cohesive manner once the error is of comparable size perceptually. The vocal behavior of normal-hearing and fluent speakers was recorded in response to a personalized size of pitch shift versus a non-specific size, one semitone. The personalized size of shift was determined based on the just-noticeable difference in fundamental frequency (F0) of each participant’s voice. Here we show that both tasks successfully demonstrated opposing responses to a constant and predictable F0 perturbation (on from the production onset) but these effects barely carried over once the feedback was back to normal, depicting a pattern that bears some resemblance to compensatory responses. Experiencing a F0 shift that is perceived as self-generated (because it was precisely just-noticeable) is not enough to force speakers to behave more consistently and more homogeneously in an opposing manner. On the contrary, our results suggest that the type of the response as well as the magnitude of the response do not depend in any trivial way on the sensitivity of participants to their own voice pitch. Based on this finding, we speculate that error correction could possibly occur even with a bionic ear, typically even when F0 cues are too subtle for cochlear implant users to detect accurately.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation to pitch-altered feedback is independent of one’s own voice pitch sensitivity

Alemi

Lehmann

Deroche

2020

Sci Rep

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“…Likewise, untrained non-musicians exhibited compensatory vocal responses for such small sizes of F0 changes in the AF, while they were not tested for awareness of the F0 changes (Liu and Larson, 2007). A recent study clearly demonstrated that untrained participants showed compensatory vocal responses to small F0 changes (10 cents) without perceptual detection of any alteration in their modified voice (Scheerer and Jones, 2018). These findings suggest that unconscious compensation for small vocal pitch-shifts can generally be observed, irrespective of expertise in vocal control, although all these studies have used sudden changes of AF in the middle of vocalization as perturbations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconscious and Distinctive Control of Vocal Pitch and Timbre During Altered Auditory Feedback

Tachibana

Okanoya

et al. 2020

Front. Psychol.

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Vocal control plays a critical role in smooth social communication. Speakers constantly monitor auditory feedback (AF) and make adjustments when their voices deviate from their intentions. Previous studies have shown that when certain acoustic features of the AF are artificially altered, speakers compensate for this alteration in the opposite direction. However, little is known about how the vocal control system implements compensations for alterations of different acoustic features, and associates them with subjective consciousness. The present study investigated whether compensations for the fundamental frequency (F0), which corresponds to perceived pitch, and formants, which contribute to perceived timbre, can be performed unconsciously and independently. Forty native Japanese speakers received two types of altered AF during vowel production that involved shifts of either only the formant frequencies (formant modification; Fm) or both the pitch and formant frequencies (pitch + formant modification; PFm). For each type, three levels of shift (slight, medium, and severe) in both directions (increase or decrease) were used. After the experiment, participants were tested for whether they had perceived a change in the F0 and/or formants. The results showed that (i) only formants were compensated for in the Fm condition, while both the F0 and formants were compensated for in the PFm condition; (ii) the F0 compensation exhibited greater precision than the formant compensation in PFm; and (iii) compensation occurred even when participants misperceived or could not explicitly perceive the alteration in AF. These findings indicate that non-experts can compensate for both formant and F0 modifications in the AF during vocal production, even when the modifications are not explicitly or correctly perceived, which provides further evidence for a dissociation between conscious perception and action in vocal control. We propose that such unconscious control of voice production may enhance rapid adaptation to changing speech environments and facilitate mutual communication.

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“…Of note, the DIVA model is primarily designed for speech motor control, yet ample behavioral work suggests that similar control systems are involved in vocal motor control [e.g. [6][7][8][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] ]. According to DIVA, early vocalizations allow the auditory and somatosensory sensory feedback systems to learn the relationships between a given motor command and the sensory feedback stemming from the resultant vocalization.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between vocal pitch perception and production: a developmental perspective

Murray

Stepp

2020

Sci Rep

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the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between vocal pitch discrimination abilities and vocal responses to auditory pitch-shifts. Twenty children (6.6-11.7 years) and twenty adults (18-28 years) completed a listening task to determine auditory discrimination abilities to vocal fundamental frequency (f o ) as well as two vocalization tasks in which their perceived f o was modulated in real-time. These pitch-shifts were either unexpected, providing information on auditory feedback control, or sustained, providing information on sensorimotor adaptation. Children were subdivided into two groups based on their auditory pitch discrimination abilities; children within two standard deviations of the adult group were classified as having adult-like discrimination abilities (N = 11), whereas children outside of this range were classified as having less sensitive discrimination abilities than adults (n = 9). Children with less sensitive auditory pitch discrimination abilities had significantly larger vocal response magnitudes to unexpected pitch-shifts and significantly smaller vocal response magnitudes to sustained pitch-shifts. children with less sensitive auditory pitch discrimination abilities may rely more on auditory feedback and thus may be less adept at updating their stored motor programs.

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Detecting our own vocal errors: An event-related study of the thresholds for perceiving and compensating for vocal pitch errors

Cited by 21 publications

References 49 publications

Adaptation to pitch-altered feedback is independent of one’s own voice pitch sensitivity

Adaptation to pitch-altered feedback is independent of one’s own voice pitch sensitivity

Unconscious and Distinctive Control of Vocal Pitch and Timbre During Altered Auditory Feedback

Relationships between vocal pitch perception and production: a developmental perspective

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