Timbral cues underlie instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert oboists.

While absolute pitch (AP)-the ability to identify musical pitches without external reference-is rare even in professional musicians, anecdotal evidence and case-report data suggest that some musicians without traditional AP can nonetheless better name notes played on their musical instrument of expertise than notes played on instruments less familiar to them. We have called this gain in AP ability "instrument-specific absolute pitch" (ISAP). Here, we report the results of the first two experiments designed to investigate ISAP in professional oboists. In Experiment 1 (n = 40), superiority for identifying the pitch of oboe over piano tones varied along a continuum, with 37.5% of oboists demonstrating significant ISAP. Variance in accuracy across pitches was higher among ISAP-possessors than ISAP-non-possessors, suggestive of internalized timbral idiosyncrasies, and the use of timbral cues was the second-most commonly reported task strategy. For both timbres, both groups performed more accurately for pitches associated with white than black piano keys. In Experiment 2 (n = 12), oboists with ISAP were less accurate in pitch identification when oboe tones were artificially pitch-shifted. The use of timbral idiosyncrasies thus may constitute a widespread mechanism of ISAP. Motor interference, conversely, did not significantly reduce accuracy. This study offers the first evidence of ISAP among highly trained musicians and that reliance on subtle timbral (or intonational) idiosyncrasies may constitute an underlying mechanism of this ability in expert oboists. This provides a path forward for future studies extending the scientific understanding of ISAP to other instrument types, expertise levels, and musical contexts. More generally, this may deepen knowledge of specialized expertise, representing a range of implicit abilities that are not addressed directly in training, but which may develop through practice of a related skill set.

Temporal fine structure sensitivity measured with pulse-spreading harmonic complexes.

Two experiments investigated sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS) in a group of normal hearing participants. The stimuli were bandpass filtered pulse-spreading harmonic complexes (PSHCs) with a regular envelope repetition rate and a phase adjusted so that the TFS peaks were progressively shifted across envelope periods. For up-PSHCs, the TFS peaks were advanced, yielding a rising pitch percept, while for down-PSHCs, the peaks were delayed, yielding a falling pitch percept. Experiment 1 showed that in a fixed frequency region, there was a range of rates for which the direction of the pitch change could be identified. Cochlear model simulations suggested that participants may use either place-of-excitation and/or temporal cues to perform this task. Experiment 2 showed that there was an envelope rate below which down-PSHCs and up-PSHCs could not be discriminated. This lower envelope rate limit of TFS sensitivity significantly increased with increases in frequency region and was similar to the lower rate limit of melodic pitch. The results in high frequency regions suggest that TFS cues are available up to 10 kHz when the rank of the lowest component present in the passband is 18, and all harmonics are presumably unresolved.

Social and communicative not a prerequisite: Preverbal infants learn an abstract rule only from congruent audiovisual dynamic pitch-height patterns.

Learning in the everyday environment often requires the flexible integration of relevant multisensory information. Previous research has demonstrated preverbal infants' capacity to extract an abstract rule from audiovisual temporal sequences matched in temporal synchrony. Interestingly, this capacity was recently reported to be modulated by crossmodal correspondence beyond spatiotemporal matching (e.g., consistent facial emotional expressions or articulatory mouth movements matched with sound). To investigate whether such modulatory influence applies to non-social and non-communicative stimuli, we conducted a critical test using audiovisual stimuli free of social information: visually upward (and downward) moving objects paired with a congruent tone of ascending or incongruent (descending) pitch. East Asian infants (8-10 months old) from a metropolitan area in Asia demonstrated successful abstract rule learning in the congruent audiovisual condition and demonstrated weaker learning in the incongruent condition. This implies that preverbal infants use crossmodal dynamic pitch-height correspondence to integrate multisensory information before rule extraction. This result confirms that preverbal infants are ready to use non-social non-communicative information in serving cognitive functions such as rule extraction in a multisensory context.

Native language background affects the perception of duration and pitch.

Estonian is a quantity language with both a primary duration cue and a secondary pitch cue, whereas Chinese is a tonal language with a dominant pitch use. Using a mismatch negativity experiment and a behavioral discrimination experiment, we investigated how native language background affects the perception of duration only, pitch only, and duration plus pitch information. Chinese participants perceived duration in Estonian as meaningless acoustic information due to a lack of phonological use of duration in their native language; however, they demonstrated a better pitch discrimination ability than Estonian participants. On the other hand, Estonian participants outperformed Chinese participants in perceiving the non-speech pure tones that resembled the Estonian quantity (i.e., containing both duration and pitch information). Our results indicate that native language background affects the perception of duration and pitch and that such an effect is not specific to processing speech sounds.

Pupillometry reveals effects of pitch manipulation within and across words on listening effort and short-term memory.

For individuals with hearing loss, even successful speech communication comes at a cost. Cochlear implants transmit degraded information, specifically for voice pitch, which demands extra and sustained listening effort. The current study hypothesized that abnormal pitch patterns contribute to the additional listening effort, even in non-tonal language native speaking normally hearing listeners. We manipulated the fundamental frequency (F0) within and across words, while participants listen and repeat (simple intelligibility task), or listen, repeat, and later recall (concurrent encoding task) the words. In both experiments, the F0 manipulations resulted in small changes in intelligibility but no difference in free recall or subjective effort ratings. Pupillary metrics were yet sensitive to these manipulations: pupil dilations were larger when words were monotonized (flat contour) or inverted (the natural contour flipped upside-down), and larger when successive words were organized into a melodic pattern. The most likely interpretation is that the natural or expected F0 contour of a word contributes to its identity and facilitate its matching and retrieval from the phonological representation stored in long-term memory. Consequently, degrading words' F0 contour can result in extra listening effort. Our results call for solutions to improve pitch saliency and naturalness in future development of cochlear implants' signal processing strategies, even for non-tonal languages.

The Contributions of Pitch, Loudness, and Rate Control to Speech Naturalness in Cerebellar Ataxia.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to determine the relationship between the perceptual measure of speech naturalness and objective measures of pitch, loudness, and rate control as a potential tool for assessment of ataxic dysarthria. METHOD: Twenty-seven participants with ataxia and 29 age- and sex-matched control participants completed the pitch glide and loudness step tasks drawn from the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment-Second Edition (FDA-2) in addition to speech diadochokinetic (DDK) tasks. First, group differences were compared for pitch variability in the pitch glide task, loudness variability in the loudness step task, and syllable duration and speech rate in the DDK task. Then, these acoustic measures were compared with previously collected ratings of speech naturalness by speech-language pathology graduate students. RESULTS: Robust group differences were measured for pitch variability and both DDK syllable duration and speech rate, indicating that the ataxia group had greater pitch variability, longer DDK syllable duration, and slower DDK speech rate than the control group. No group differences were measured for loudness variability. There were robust relationships between speech naturalness and pitch variability, DDK syllable duration, and DDK speech rate, but not for loudness variability. CONCLUSIONS: Objective acoustic measures of pitch variability in the FDA-2 pitch glide task and syllable duration and speech rate in the DDK task can be used to validate perceptual measures of speech naturalness. Overall, speech-language pathologists can incorporate both perceptual measures of speech naturalness and acoustic measures of pitch variability and DDK performance for a comprehensive evaluation of ataxic dysarthria.

Individual variability in the use of tonal and non-tonal cues in intonationa).

Greek uses H*, L + H*, and H* + L, all followed by L-L% edge tones, as nuclear pitch accents in statements. A previous analysis demonstrated that these accents are distinguished by F0 scaling and contour shape. This study expands the earlier investigation by exploring additional cues, namely, voice quality, amplitude, and duration, in distinguishing the pitch accents, and investigating individual variability in the selection of both F0 and non-F0 cues. Bayesian multivariate analysis and hierarchical clustering demonstrate that the accents are distinguished not only by F0 but also by additional cues at the group level, with individual variability in cue selection.

Differences Between French and English in the Use of Suprasegmental Cues for the Short-Term Recall of Word Lists.

PURPOSE: Greater recognition of the impact of hearing loss on cognitive functions has led speech/hearing clinics to focus more on auditory memory outcomes. Typically evaluated by scoring participants' recall on a list of unrelated words after they have heard the list read out loud, this method implies pitch and timing variations across words. Here, we questioned whether these variations could impact performance differentially in one language or another. METHOD: In a series of online studies evaluating auditory short-term memory in normally hearing adults, we examined how pitch patterns (Experiment 1), timing patterns (Experiment 2), and interactions between the two (Experiment 3) affected free recall of words, cued recall of forgotten words, and mental demand. Note that visual memory was never directly tested; written words were only used after auditory encoding in the cued recall part. Studies were administered in both French and English, always conducted with native listeners. RESULT: Confirming prior work, grouping mechanisms facilitated free recall, but not cued recall (the latter being only affected by longer presentation time) or ratings of mental demand. Critically, grouping by pitch provided more benefit for French than for English listeners, while grouping by time was equally beneficial in both languages. CONCLUSION: Pitch is more useful to French- than to English-speaking listeners for encoding spoken words in short-term memory, perhaps due to the syllable-based versus stress-based rhythms inherent to each language. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27048328.

Effects of selective stimulation of apical electrodes on temporal pitch perception by cochlear implant recipients.

This study investigated whether selective apical stimulation improves temporal pitch perception in eight MED-EL cochlear implant recipients and whether any such improvement relates to auditory-nerve survival. Three stimulation conditions differing in the place and width of excitation were evaluated: single-electrode stimulation of (i) the most apical, (ii) a mid-array electrode, and (iii) multi-electrode stimulation of the four most apical electrodes. Stimulation-current-induced non-stimulating electrode voltages were recorded to identify extracochlear electrodes and gauge insertion depth. The pitches of the four most apical electrodes were compared using place-pitch ranking. Rate-pitch ranking was assessed between 80 and 981 pulses per second for the three stimulation conditions, to estimate the "upper limit" of temporal pitch. Single-electrode apical stimulation did not increase the upper limit relative to other conditions. The polarity effect (PE), defined as the difference between thresholds obtained for triphasic pulse trains with their central high-amplitude phase either anodic or cathodic, was obtained to evaluate peripheral neural health. The PE did not differ between apical and mid-array stimulation or correlate with the upper limit. In conclusion, we found no improvement of temporal pitch perception with single-electrode apical stimulation, and discuss possible explanations for this observation.

Cochlear Implantation in Single-Sided Deafness and Asymmetric Hearing Loss: 12 Months Follow-up Results of a European Multicenter Evaluation.

People with single-sided deafness (SSD) or asymmetric hearing loss (AHL) have particular difficulty understanding speech in noisy listening situations and in sound localization. The objective of this multicenter study is to evaluate the effect of a cochlear implant (CI) in adults with single-sided deafness (SSD) or asymmetric hearing loss (AHL), particularly regarding sound localization and speech intelligibility with additional interest in electric-acoustic pitch matching. A prospective longitudinal study at 7 European tertiary referral centers was conducted including 19 SSD and 16 AHL subjects undergoing cochlear implantation. Sound localization accuracy was investigated in terms of root mean square error and signed bias before and after implantation. Speech recognition in quiet and speech reception thresholds in noise for several spatial configurations were assessed preoperatively and at several post-activation time points. Pitch perception with CI was tracked using pitch matching. Data up to 12 months post activation were collected. In both SSD and AHL subjects, CI significantly improved sound localization for sound sources on the implant side, and thus overall sound localization. Speech recognition in quiet with the implant ear improved significantly. In noise, a significant head shadow effect was found for SSD subjects only. However, the evaluation of AHL subjects was limited by the small sample size. No uniform development of pitch perception with the implant ear was observed. The benefits shown in this study confirm and expand the existing body of evidence for the effectiveness of CI in SSD and AHL. Particularly, improved localization was shown to result from increased localization accuracy on the implant side.

Perception and imitation of period-doubled phonation: Pitch and voice qualitya).

Period-doubled phonation, henceforth, period doubling, characterized by voicing periods that alternate in amplitudes and/or frequencies, is often perceived rough and with an indeterminate pitch. Lower pitch percept has been suggested by past studies when the degree of amplitude or frequency modulation increases. However, how listeners use period doubling when identifying linguistic tones remains unclear. The current study uses tasks of categorization with training, followed by imitation of tones manipulated with period doubling (with amplitude and frequency modulation, both separately and jointly) in a novel language. Native Mandarin and English speakers with different levels of music experience were tested. I show that period doubling leads to a low-tone bias in perception and imitation, especially as the modulation degree, particularly that of frequency, increases. Interestingly, interactions with stimulus f0 and modulation type show that in amplitude-modulated tokens, when compared to lower f0 (200 Hz), higher f0 (300 Hz) drives more low-tone responses. Period doubling is also imitated with lowered f0 and creaky quality. Language and music experience does not affect perceptual and imitative responses, suggesting that the perception of period doubling is not language-specific or conditioned by tonal knowledge. Period doubling likely signals low tones, even when the original f0 is high.

Perceptual anchoring: Children with dyslexia benefit less than controls from contextual repetitions in speech processing.

OBJECTIVES: Individuals with dyslexia perceive and utilize statistical features in the auditory input deficiently. The present study investigates whether affected children also benefit less from repeating context tones as perceptual anchors for subsequent speech processing. METHODS: In an event-related potential study, eleven-year-old children with dyslexia (n = 21) and without dyslexia (n = 20) heard syllable pairs, with the first syllable either receiving a constant pitch (anchor) or variable pitch (no-anchor), while second syllables were identical across conditions. RESULTS: Children with and without dyslexia showed smaller auditory P2 responses to constant-pitch versus variable-pitch first syllables, while only control children additionally showed smaller N1 and faster P1 responses. This suggests less automatic processing of anchor repetitions in dyslexia. For the second syllables, both groups showed faster P2 responses following anchor than no-anchor first syllables, but only controls additionally showed smaller P2 responses. CONCLUSIONS: Children with and without dyslexia show differences in anchor effects. While both groups seem to allocate less attention to speech stimuli after contextual repetitions, children with dyslexia display less facilitation in speech processing from acoustic anchors. SIGNIFICANCE: Altered anchoring in the linguistic domain may contribute to the difficulties of individuals with dyslexia in establishing long-term representations of speech.

Involuntary motor responses are elicited both by rare sounds and rare pitch changes.

Unpredictable deviations from an otherwise regular auditory sequence, as well as rare sounds following a period of silence, are detected automatically. Recent evidence suggests that the latter also elicit quick involuntary modulations of ongoing motor activity emerging as early as 100 ms following sound onset, which was attributed to supramodal processing. We explored such force modulations for both rare and deviant sounds. Participants (N = 29) pinched a force sensitive device and maintained a force of 1-2 N for periods of 1 min. Task-irrelevant tones were presented under two conditions. In the Rare condition, 4000 Hz tones were presented every 8-to-16 s. In the Roving condition, 4000 Hz and 2996 Hz tones were presented at rate of 1 s, with infrequent (p = 1/12) frequency changes. In the Rare condition, transient force modulations were observed with a significant increase at ~ 234 ms, and a decrease at ~ 350 ms. In the Roving condition with low frequency deviant tones, an increase in force was observed at ~ 277 ms followed by a decrease at ~ 413 ms. No significant modulations were observed during perception of high frequency deviants. These results suggest that both rare silence-breaking sounds and low-pitched deviants evoke automatic fluctuations of motor responses, which opens up the possibility that these force modulations are triggered by stimulus-specific change-detection processes.

Experience with the cochlear implant enhances the neural tracking of spectrotemporal patterns in the Alberti bass.

Cochlear implant (CI) users experience diminished music enjoyment due to the technical limitations of the CI. Nonetheless, behavioral studies have reported that rhythmic features are well-transmitted through the CI. Still, the gradual improvement of rhythm perception after the CI switch-on has not yet been determined using neurophysiological measures. To fill this gap, we here reanalyzed the electroencephalographic responses of participants from two previous mismatch negativity studies. These studies included eight recently implanted CI users measured twice, within the first six weeks after CI switch-on and approximately three months later; thirteen experienced CI users with a median experience of 7 years; and fourteen normally hearing (NH) controls. All participants listened to a repetitive four-tone pattern (known in music as Alberti bass) for 35 min. Applying frequency tagging, we aimed to estimate the neural activity synchronized to the periodicities of the Alberti bass. We hypothesized that longer experience with the CI would be reflected in stronger frequency-tagged neural responses approaching the responses of NH controls. We found an increase in the frequency-tagged amplitudes after only 3 months of CI use. This increase in neural synchronization may reflect an early adaptation to the CI stimulation. Moreover, the frequency-tagged amplitudes of experienced CI users were significantly greater than those of recently implanted CI users, but still smaller than those of NH controls. The frequency-tagged neural responses did not just reflect spectrotemporal changes in the stimuli (i.e., intensity or spectral content fluctuating over time), but also showed non-linear transformations that seemed to enhance relevant periodicities of the Alberti bass. Our findings provide neurophysiological evidence indicating a gradual adaptation to the CI, which is noticeable already after three months, resulting in close to NH brain processing of spectrotemporal features of musical rhythms after extended CI use.

Consonance in the carillon.

Previous psychological studies have shown that musical consonance is not only determined by the frequency ratios between tones, but also by the frequency spectra of those tones. However, these prior studies used artificial tones, specifically tones built from a small number of pure tones, which do not match the acoustic complexity of real musical instruments. The present experiment therefore investigates tones recorded from a real musical instrument, the Westerkerk Carillon, conducting a "dense rating" experiment where participants (N = 113) rated musical intervals drawn from the continuous range 0-15 semitones. Results show that the traditional consonances of the major third and the minor sixth become dissonances in the carillon and that small intervals (in particular 0.5-2.5 semitones) also become particularly dissonant. Computational modelling shows that these effects are primarily caused by interference between partials (e.g., beating), but that preference for harmonicity is also necessary to produce an accurate overall account of participants' preferences. The results support musicians' writings about the carillon and contribute to ongoing debates about the psychological mechanisms underpinning consonance perception, in particular disputing the recent claim that interference is largely irrelevant to consonance perception.

Dissociable neuronal mechanism for different crossmodal correspondence effects in humans.

Crossmodal correspondences (CMCs) refer to associations between seemingly arbitrary stimulus features in different sensory modalities. Pitch­size correspondences refer to the strong association of e.g., small objects with high pitches. Pitch­elevation correspondences refer to the strong association of e.g., visuospatial elevated objects with high pitches. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural components, which underlie the CMCs in pitch­size and spatial pitch­elevation. This study focuses on answering the question of whether or not different CMCs are driven by similar neural mechanisms. The comparison of congruent against incongruent trials allows the estimation of CMC effects across different CMCs. The analysis of the measured neural activity in different CMCs strongly pointed toward different mechanisms which are involved in the processing of pitch­size and pitch­elevation correspondences. Differential, whole brain effects were observed within the superior parietal lobule (SPL), cerebellum and Heschls' gyrus (HG). Further, the angular gyrus (AnG), the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were engaged in processing the CMCs but showed different effects for processing congruent compared to incongruent stimulus presentations. Within pitch­size significant effects in the AnG and ACC were found for congruent stimulus presentations whereas for pitch­elevation, significant effects in the ACC and IPS were found for incongruent stimulus presentations. In summary, the present results indicated differential neural processing in different simple audio­visual CMCs.

High-Pitched Sound is Open and Low-Pitched Sound is Closed: Representing the Spatial Meaning of Pitch Height.

Research shows that high- and low-pitch sounds can be associated with various meanings. For example, high-pitch sounds are associated with small concepts, whereas low-pitch sounds are associated with large concepts. This study presents three experiments revealing that high-pitch sounds are also associated with open concepts and opening hand actions, while low-pitch sounds are associated with closed concepts and closing hand actions. In Experiment 1, this sound-meaning correspondence effect was shown using the two-alternative forced-choice task, while Experiments 2 and 3 used reaction time tasks to show this interaction. In Experiment 2, high-pitch vocalizations were found to facilitate opening hand gestures, and low-pitch vocalizations were found to facilitate closing hand gestures, when performed simultaneously. In Experiment 3, high-pitched vocalizations were produced particularly rapidly when the visual target stimulus presented an open object, and low-pitched vocalizations were produced particularly rapidly when the target presented a closed object. These findings are discussed concerning the meaning of intonational cues. They are suggested to be based on cross-modally representing conceptual spatial knowledge in sensory, motor, and affective systems. Additionally, this pitch-opening effect might share cognitive processes with other pitch-meaning effects.

Timbral brightness perception investigated through multimodal interference.

Brightness is among the most studied aspects of timbre perception. Psychoacoustically, sounds described as "bright" versus "dark" typically exhibit a high versus low frequency emphasis in the spectrum. However, relatively little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms that facilitate these metaphors we listen with. Do they originate in universal magnitude representations common to more than one sensory modality? Triangulating three different interaction paradigms, we investigated using speeded classification whether intramodal, crossmodal, and amodal interference occurs when timbral brightness, as modeled by the centroid of the spectral envelope, and pitch height/visual brightness/numerical value processing are semantically congruent and incongruent. In four online experiments varying in priming strategy, onset timing, and response deadline, 189 total participants were presented with a baseline stimulus (a pitch, gray square, or numeral) then asked to quickly identify a target stimulus that is higher/lower, brighter/darker, or greater/less than the baseline after being primed with a bright or dark synthetic harmonic tone. Results suggest that timbral brightness modulates the perception of pitch and possibly visual brightness, but not numerical value. Semantically incongruent pitch height-timbral brightness shifts produced significantly slower reaction time (RT) and higher error compared to congruent pairs. In the visual task, incongruent pairings of gray squares and tones elicited slower RTs than congruent pairings (in two experiments). No interference was observed in the number comparison task. These findings shed light on the embodied and multimodal nature of experiencing timbre.

Absolute pitch in involuntary musical imagery.

Memory for isolated absolute pitches is extremely rare in Western, English-speaking populations. However, past research has found that people can voluntarily reproduce well-known songs in the original key much more often than chance. It is unknown whether this requires deliberate effort or if it manifests in involuntary musical imagery (INMI, or earworms). Participants (N = 30, convenience sample) were surveyed at random times over a week and asked to produce a sung recording of any music they were experiencing in their heads. We measured the "pitch error" of each recording to the nearest semitone by comparing participants' recordings to the original song. We found that 44.7% of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, and 68.9% of recordings were within ± 1 semitone of the original song. Our results provide novel evidence that a large proportion of the population has access to absolute pitch, as revealed in their INMI.

Do 14-17-month-old infants use iconic speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings?a).

This experimental study investigated whether infants use iconicity in speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings. Specifically, we tested infants' sensitivity to size sound symbolism and iconic gesture cues and asked whether combining these cues in a multimodal fashion would enhance infants' sensitivity in a superadditive manner. Thirty-six 14-17-month-old infants participated in a preferential looking task in which they heard a spoken nonword (e.g., "zudzud") while observing a small and large object (e.g., a small and large square). All infants were presented with an iconic cue for object size (small or large) (1) in the pitch of the spoken non-word (high vs low), (2) in gesture (small or large), or (3) congruently in pitch and gesture (e.g., a high pitch and small gesture indicating a small square). Infants did not show a preference for congruently sized objects in any iconic cue condition. Bayes factor analyses showed moderate to strong support for the null hypotheses. In conclusion, 14-17-month-old infants did not use iconic pitch cues, iconic gesture cues, or iconic multimodal cues (pitch and gesture) to associate speech sounds with their referents. These findings challenge theories that emphasize the role of iconicity in early language development.