Transfer effects in the vocal imitation of speech and song.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated how practice imitations of speech impacted imitations of songs and vice versa. Participants were first asked to practice imitating sung or spoken sequences, and then to imitate a new sequence, which could differ with respect to domain (speaking or singing), global pitch contour (question vs. statement pattern), and/or words. Pitch accuracy during transfer was affected by changes to domain and contour, but not text. Somewhat surprisingly, best transfer was found either when both domain and contour remained the same or both changed. Transfer performance suffered when only one feature changed and the other remained consistent. Analyses of individual differences showed that poor-pitch imitators had a harder time adopting the pitch structure of new sequences, regardless of whether the sequence was speech or song. Results were not consistent with claims for either independence or complete integration of music and language, but instead argue for differences in domain possibly based on the salience of pitch structures in the signal.

A Mechanism for Sensorimotor Translation in Singing

“…The direction of VPID errors has been shown to drift in the direction of the individual's ''comfort pitch'' (Sergeant, 1994;cf. Hutchins, Zarate, Zatorre, & Peretz, 2010;Pfordresher & Brown, 2007), the size of imitated pitch intervals is compressed (Dalla-Bella, Giguere, & Peretz, 2009, Liu et al, 2013, Pfordresher & Brown, 2007, and VPID singers exhibit a greater tendency to perseverate on past pitch patterns when transferring from one sequence to another (Wisniewski et al, 2013). Figure 2 shows two candidate multi-modal representations for VPID individuals, both are consistent with aspects of existing data.…”

“…Likewise, levels of anxiety brought about by an experiment may or may not influence the source of bias exhibited by a participant. A particularly interesting and complex matter for modeling has to do with the aforementioned tendency for VPID participants to perseverate recently produced pitch patterns (Wisniewski et al, 2013). It is possible that such perseveratory behavior falls out of the pervasive influence of ''comfort pitch'' on all performances.…”

“…Recent research suggests that individual differences in singing may in large part stem from problems of sensorimotor translation (Berkowska & Dalla Bella, 2009;Hutchins & Peretz, 2012;Pfordresher & Brown, 2007;Pfordresher & Mantell, 2014) that may reflect a problem of vocal pitch imitation that extends also to the imitation of speech prosody Wisniewski, Mantell, & Pfordresher, 2013). As such, the model in this paper is not so much a model of singing as it is a model of sensorimotor associations that guide vocal imitation of pitch.…”

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

“…Poor-pitch singers also show a larger advantage for matching pitch from recordings of their own voice, in contrast to matching the vocal pitch of other singers, than do more accurate singers (R. Moore et al, 2008;Pfordresher & Mantell, 2014). Finally, when transferring from the imitation of one sequence to another, poor-pitch singers show a greater tendency to perseverate the previously imitated pitch pattern than do more accurate singers (Wisniewski, Mantell, & Pfordresher, 2013). Interestingly, this apparent lack of flexibility in poor-pitch singers does not appear to be based on vocal motor control in that poor-pitch singers exhibit similar pitch range and ability to control a sustained pitch as accurate singers (Pfordresher & Brown, 2007;Pfordresher & Mantell, 2009).…”

“…E. Miller & Dollard, 1941) predict that the fidelity with which particular sounds are imitated should increase incrementally as the number of comparisons between produced vocalizations and remembered targets increases. However, studies of the vocal imitation of pitch in singing have not shown any improvements across repeated trials in which participants attempted either to match the same pitch vocally (Hutchins & Peretz, 2012), or to repeatedly imitate the same spoken or sung sequence (Wisniewski et al, 2013). Likewise, efforts to enhance pitch imitation accuracy by having participants sing along with the correct sequence (auditory augmented feedback) have yielded mixed results and may even degrade the performance of poor-pitch singers (Hutchins, Zarate, Zatorre, & Peretz, 2010;Pfordresher & Brown, 2007;Wang, Yan, & Ng, 2012;Wise & Sloboda, 2008).…”