The effect of visual and auditory feedback on adult poor-pitch remediation

Abstract

Previous research has led to the hypothesis that poor-pitch singing is the result of a weakness in the auditory/vocal loop. The present study evaluated this hypothesis in a training paradigm that used visual feedback to augment potentially faulty auditory-vocal associations. Following pretest with the Seattle Singing Accuracy Protocol (SSAP), participants were randomly assigned to one of three 20-min training conditions: (1) visual feedback training with auditory doubling, in which participants could both see and hear real-time feedback showing the relationship between their sung pitch and the target, (2) auditory feedback training, where participants relied only on airborne auditory feedback from their own voice, and (3) control training which involved imitation of speech from a foreign language instruction recording. After training, the SSAP was administered again as a posttest measure. There was a general improvement from pretest to posttest across all groups. However, the effect of training was only significant for participants who received visual feedback training, with greater gains in visual training than either of the other conditions. This pattern of results was particularly pronounced for performance on 4-note melodies in the SSAP, in contrast to single pitch matching. Visual feedback may facilitate accuracy by substituting for inaccurate auditory-motor associations. The fact that training, even over a very short time-span, can have significant effects on singing underlines the importance of practice, and supports the hypothesis that singing is a learned skill that can benefit from experience and may not simply reflect an inherited talent.

Singing accuracy across the lifespan

“…Following an analysis designed to chart the trajectory of singing accuracy with age for the whole sample, further analyses are presented that are designed to address in greater detail the association of age‐related changes in singing accuracy with musical training, gender, pitch discrimination, and self‐assessment. Previous research suggests that practice may have considerable effects on singing accuracy among children 36 and young adults, 37 but, to my knowledge, no point of comparison across age groups has been made with respect to the effects of experience. Likewise, previous evidence suggests girls take part in singing more than boys past early childhood in many cultures due to the effects of gender stereotyping, 38 but to date, no broad‐based study to my knowledge has assessed gender differences in singing accuracy.…”