Pitch-Matching in Poor Singers: Human Model Advantage

Lévêque, Yohana; Schön, Daniele

doi:10.1016/j.jvoice.2011.04.001

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Additionally, the timbre difference between the speech (human voices) and music stimuli (piano tones) might have played a role. As suggested by previous research (e.g., Leveque et al, 2012), piano timbre is more difficult to imitate than human voice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Perceptual pitch deficits coexist with pitch production difficulties in music but not Mandarin speech

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Congenital amusia is a musical disorder that mainly affects pitch perception. Among Mandarin speakers, some amusics also have difficulties in processing lexical tones (tone agnosics). To examine to what extent these perceptual deficits may be related to pitch production impairments in music and Mandarin speech, eight amusics, eight tone agnosics, and 12 age- and IQ-matched normal native Mandarin speakers were asked to imitate music note sequences and Mandarin words of comparable lengths. The results indicated that both the amusics and tone agnosics underperformed the controls on musical pitch production. However, tone agnosics performed no worse than the amusics, suggesting that lexical tone perception deficits may not aggravate musical pitch production difficulties. Moreover, these three groups were all able to imitate lexical tones with perfect intelligibility. Taken together, the current study shows that perceptual musical pitch and lexical tone deficits might coexist with musical pitch production difficulties. But at the same time these perceptual pitch deficits might not affect lexical tone production or the intelligibility of the speech words that were produced. The perception-production relationship for pitch among individuals with perceptual pitch deficits may be, therefore, domain-dependent.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Perceptual pitch deficits coexist with pitch production difficulties in music but not Mandarin speech

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent studies of humans provide some support for the hypothesis that vocal imitation is facilitated for natural vocalizations. For instance, matching of pitch is more accurate with a human voice timbre than a synthetic vocal timbre (Lévêque, Giovanni, & Schön, 2012; R. Moore, Estis, Gordon-Hickey, & Watts, 2008) or with a complex tone (Hutchins & Peretz, 2012;Watts & Hall, 2008). Adults also match pitch better when the vocal range of the target is closer to their range, as when female imitators match a female voice (H. E. Price, 2000).…”

Section: Variations In the Imitatibility Of Soundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Mercado¹,

Mantell²,

Pfordresher³

2014

CCBR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Vocal imitation is often described as a specialized form of learning that facilitates social communication and that involves less cognitively sophisticated mechanisms than more "perceptually opaque" types of imitation. Here, we present an alternative perspective. Considering current evidence from adult mammals, we note that vocal imitation often does not lead to learning and can involve a wide range of cognitive processes. We further suggest that sound imitation capacities may have evolved in certain mammals, such as cetaceans and humans, to enhance both the perception of ongoing actions and the prediction of future events, rather than to facilitate mate attraction or the formation of social bonds. The ability of adults to voluntarily imitate sounds is better described as a cognitive skill than as a communicative learning mechanism. Sound imitation abilities are gradually acquired through practice and require the coordination of multiple perceptual-motor and cognitive mechanisms for representing and generating sounds. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to explaining why relatively few mammals are capable of flexibly imitating sounds, and why individuals vary in their ability to imitate sounds. Keywords: mimicry; copying; social learning; singing; emulation; imitatible; convergence; imitativenessIn his seminal text, Habitat and Instinct, Lloyd Morgan (1896, p. 166) describes two general kinds of imitation: instinctive imitation and intelligent or voluntary imitation. The examples he provides of intelligent imitation mostly involve reproducing sounds-a child copies words used by his companions, a mockingbird imitates the songs of 32 other bird species, a jay imitates the neighing of a horse, and so on. In fact, most of the examples of "imitation proper" that Morgan provides consist of birds reproducing the sounds of other species. Similarly, Romanes (1884) focuses almost exclusively on reports of birds imitating songs, music, and speech in his discussion of imitation. These classic portrayals of vocal reproductions as providing the best and clearest examples of imitation stand in stark contrast to current psychological discussions of imitation, which often classify examples such as those given by Romanes and Morgan as non-imitative performances that merely resemble actual imitation (Byrne, 2002;Heyes, 1996). When did phenomena that were once considered archetypal examples of voluntary imitation transform into a footnote of modern cognitive theories? Was some discovery made that fundamentally changed our scientific understanding of the processes underlying vocal imitation? Have psychologists or biologists succeeded in explaining what vocal imitation is and how it works to the point where little can be gained from further study? Or, have theoretical assumptions led scientists to underestimate the cognitive mechanisms required for an individual to be able to flexibly imitate sounds?In the present article, we attempt to identify what exactly vocal imitation entails, and to assess whether current explanatory fr...

show abstract

“…Singers are better able to match the pitch of vocal targets with a similar voice than the pitch of instruments (Watts and Hall, 2008) and better able to match the pitch of their own voice than the pitch of other targets (Moore et al, 2008). Poor singers are especially aided by using a human, rather than synthetic, target pitch (Léveque et al, 2012). Educators also report that children tend to be able to match pitch better when modeling a similar voice (reviewed in Goetze et al, 1990).…”

Section: Production Of the Singing Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

The Linked Dual Representation model of vocal perception and production

Moreno

2013

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The voice is one of the most important media for communication, yet there is a wide range of abilities in both the perception and production of the voice. In this article, we review this range of abilities, focusing on pitch accuracy as a particularly informative case, and look at the factors underlying these abilities. Several classes of models have been posited describing the relationship between vocal perception and production, and we review the evidence for and against each class of model. We look at how the voice is different from other musical instruments and review evidence about both the association and the dissociation between vocal perception and production abilities. Finally, we introduce the Linked Dual Representation (LDR) model, a new approach which can account for the broad patterns in prior findings, including trends in the data which might seem to be countervailing. We discuss how this model interacts with higher-order cognition and examine its predictions about several aspects of vocal perception and production.

show abstract

Pitch-Matching in Poor Singers: Human Model Advantage

Cited by 17 publications

References 35 publications

Perceptual pitch deficits coexist with pitch production difficulties in music but not Mandarin speech

Perceptual pitch deficits coexist with pitch production difficulties in music but not Mandarin speech

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

The Linked Dual Representation model of vocal perception and production

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About