Speech-in-noise perception is linked to rhythm production skills in adult percussionists and non-musicians

Abstract

Speech rhythms guide perception, especially in noise. We recently revealed that percussionists outperform non-musicians in speech-in-noise perception, with better speech-in-noise perception associated with better rhythm discrimination across a range of rhythmic expertise. Here, we consider rhythm production skills, specifically drumming to a beat (metronome or music) and to sequences (metrical or jittered patterns), as well as speech-in-noise perception in adult percussionists and non-musicians. Given the absence of a regular beat in speech, we hypothesise that processing of sequences is more important for speech-in-noise perception than the ability to entrain to a regular beat. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the sequence-based drumming measures predict speech-in-noise perception, above and beyond hearing thresholds and IQ, whereas the beat-based measures do not. Outcomes suggest temporal patterns may help disambiguate speech under degraded listening conditions, extending theoretical considerations about speech rhythm to the everyday challenge of listening in noise.

Speech perception with temporally patterned noise maskers.

“…While we measured musicianship as a proxy for beat tracking ability, we plan in future studies to directly assess this ability and correlate it with task performance. This is motivated by findings that both beat tracking and beat production ability moderate speech perception in noise performance (Slater and Kraus 2016;Slater et al 2018), possibly by mitigating the e↵ect of backward masking (Tierney and Kraus, 2013).…”

Musical Training for Auditory Rehabilitation in Hearing Loss

“…They better discriminate and encode the F0 and F1 of a vowel in the presence of severe reverberation [108]. They encode speech in noise more precisely in the brainstem response [109][110][111]. This encoding advantage extends to the perception of speech in noise [112].…”

The Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE) Framework for Understanding Musicality-Language Links Across the Lifespan

“…Musical rhythm skills, specifically, appear to be associated with speech discrimination (Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2020) and SPIN (Yates et al, 2019;Slater & Kraus, 2016;Slater et al, 2018), in both children and adults. In school-aged children, rhythm sensitivity was positively associated with speech discrimination performance, controlling for musical training (Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2020).…”

“…Alongside perceptual abilities, rhythm production and imitation are also associated with speech encoding and SPIN (Woodruff Carr et al, 2014;Slater et al, 2018). For example, the ability to accurately reproduce drumming sequences, drum in time to the beat of a song and to a metronome, were all correlated with SPIN in adults (Slater et al, 2018), pointing to the involvement of sensorimotor mechanisms.…”

“…Alongside perceptual abilities, rhythm production and imitation are also associated with speech encoding and SPIN (Woodruff Carr et al, 2014;Slater et al, 2018). For example, the ability to accurately reproduce drumming sequences, drum in time to the beat of a song and to a metronome, were all correlated with SPIN in adults (Slater et al, 2018), pointing to the involvement of sensorimotor mechanisms. In the Slater et al ( 2018) study, while beat synchronization was associated with SPIN in both non-musicians and percussionists, reproducing or imitating rhythmic patterns was only associated with SPIN in non-musicians, raising questions about interactions between genetic predispositions and experience-dependent neuroplasticity.…”