The Vocal Generosity Effect: How Bad Can Your Singing Be?

Hutchins, Sean; Roquet, Catherine; Peretz, Isabelle

doi:10.1525/mp.2012.30.2.147

Cited by 76 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…One reason could be that they expected them to be less precise than the referent sounds or the sketches, and thus were more tolerant, precisely because they produced by humans. A similar effect has been reported for pitch judgments: listeners are more inclined to call a note in-tune when it is sung than when it is played with a non-vocal timbre [83]. …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Vocal Imitations of Non-Vocal Sounds

et al. 2016

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Imitative behaviors are widespread in humans, in particular whenever two persons communicate and interact. Several tokens of spoken languages (onomatopoeias, ideophones, and phonesthemes) also display different degrees of iconicity between the sound of a word and what it refers to. Thus, it probably comes at no surprise that human speakers use a lot of imitative vocalizations and gestures when they communicate about sounds, as sounds are notably difficult to describe. What is more surprising is that vocal imitations of non-vocal everyday sounds (e.g. the sound of a car passing by) are in practice very effective: listeners identify sounds better with vocal imitations than with verbal descriptions, despite the fact that vocal imitations are inaccurate reproductions of a sound created by a particular mechanical system (e.g. a car driving by) through a different system (the voice apparatus). The present study investigated the semantic representations evoked by vocal imitations of sounds by experimentally quantifying how well listeners could match sounds to category labels. The experiment used three different types of sounds: recordings of easily identifiable sounds (sounds of human actions and manufactured products), human vocal imitations, and computational “auditory sketches” (created by algorithmic computations). The results show that performance with the best vocal imitations was similar to the best auditory sketches for most categories of sounds, and even to the referent sounds themselves in some cases. More detailed analyses showed that the acoustic distance between a vocal imitation and a referent sound is not sufficient to account for such performance. Analyses suggested that instead of trying to reproduce the referent sound as accurately as vocally possible, vocal imitations focus on a few important features, which depend on each particular sound category. These results offer perspectives for understanding how human listeners store and access long-term sound representations, and sets the stage for the development of human-computer interfaces based on vocalizations.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Vocal Imitations of Non-Vocal Sounds

et al. 2016

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“…Participants were able to make more accurate tuning judgments (deciding whether two notes were the same or one was mistuned) about the synthesized vocal timbre created by the slider than about natural vocal timbres (Hutchins & Peretz, 2012, Experiment 5). This general trend to be less discerning of tuning errors in the voice than in other instruments, termed the vocal generosity effect, was confirmed and extended in a later study (Hutchins, Roquet, & Peretz, 2012). Most listeners do not notice tuning errors in the voice until they reach 50 cents off (100 cents = 1 semitone), as compared with only 20-30 cents in an instrument (such as the slider).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Singing ability is rooted in vocal-motor control of pitch

Larrouy-Maestri

Peretz

2014

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The inability to vocally match a pitch can be caused by poor pitch perception or by poor vocal-motor control. Although previous studies have tried to examine the relationship between pitch perception and vocal production, they have failed to control for the timbre of the target to be matched. In the present study, we compare pitch-matching accuracy with an unfamiliar instrument (the slider) and with the voice, designed such that the slider plays back recordings of the participant's own voice. We also measured pitch accuracy in singing a familiar melody ("Happy Birthday") to assess the relationship between single-pitch-matching tasks and melodic singing. Our results showed that participants (all nonmusicians) were significantly better at matching recordings of their own voices with the slider than with their voice, indicating that vocal-motor control is an important limiting factor on singing ability. We also found significant correlations between the ability to sing a melody in tune and vocal pitch matching, but not pitch matching on the slider. Better melodic singers also tended to have higher quality voices (as measured by acoustic variables). These results provide important evidence about the role of vocal-motor control in poor singing ability and demonstrate that single-pitch-matching tasks can be useful in measuring general singing abilities.

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“…The ability to identify with one’s own voice, in a manner that is independent of categorical perception, is closely related to the vocal generosity effect (Hutchins, Roquet, & Peretz, 2012), where listeners are more likely to judge a voice as being in tune compared to other instruments. While the original explanations for this effect involve acoustic and cognitive (top-down) factors, it is also conceivable that what subjects might do, when confronted with pitches produced by the voice, is recruit their automatic stream as a mirror neuron mechanism, or motor simulation mechanism, in order to judge intonation, instead of the more canonical, categorically based perceptual route.…”

Section: Dissociating Functional Streams With Feedback Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dual-Stream Neuroanatomy of Singing

Loui

2015

Music Perception

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Singing requires effortless and efficient use of auditory and motor systems that center around the perception and production of the human voice. Although perception and production are usually tightly coupled functions, occasional mismatches between the two systems inform us of dissociable pathways in the brain systems that enable singing. Here I review the literature on perception and production in the auditory modality, and propose a dual-stream neuroanatomical model that subserves singing. I will discuss studies surrounding the neural functions of feedforward, feedback, and efference systems that control vocal monitoring, as well as the white matter pathways that connect frontal and temporal regions that are involved in perception and production. I will also consider disruptions of the perception-production network that are evident in tone-deaf individuals and poor pitch singers. Finally, by comparing expert singers against other musicians and nonmusicians, I will evaluate the possibility that singing training might offer rehabilitation from these disruptions through neuroplasticity of the perception-production network. Taken together, the best available evidence supports a model of dorsal and ventral pathways in auditory-motor integration that enables singing and is shared with language, music, speech, and human interactions in the auditory environment.

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The Vocal Generosity Effect: How Bad Can Your Singing Be?

Cited by 76 publications

References 32 publications

Vocal Imitations of Non-Vocal Sounds

Vocal Imitations of Non-Vocal Sounds

Singing ability is rooted in vocal-motor control of pitch

A Dual-Stream Neuroanatomy of Singing

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