Musicians can sometimes achieve better speech recognition in noisy backgrounds than non-musicians, a phenomenon referred to as the “musician advantage effect.” In addition, musicians are known to possess a finer sense of pitch than non-musicians. The present study examined the hypothesis that the latter fact could explain the former. Four experiments measured speech reception threshold for a target voice against speech or non-speech maskers. Although differences in fundamental frequency (ΔF0s) were shown to be beneficial even when presented to opposite ears (experiment 1), the authors' attempt to maximize their use by directing the listener's attention to the target F0 led to unexpected impairments (experiment 2) and the authors' attempt to hinder their use by generating uncertainty about the competing F0s led to practically negligible effects (experiments 3 and 4). The benefits drawn from ΔF0s showed surprisingly little malleability for a cue that can be used in the complete absence of energetic masking. In half of the experiments, musicians obtained better thresholds than non-musicians, particularly in speech-on-speech conditions, but they did not reliably obtain larger ΔF0 benefits. Thus, the data do not support the hypothesis that the musician advantage effect is based on greater ability to exploit ΔF0s.
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October 2017
October 03 2017
Similar abilities of musicians and non-musicians to segregate voices by fundamental frequency
Mickael L. D. Deroche;
Mickael L. D. Deroche
a)
1
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
, 3640 rue de la Montagne, Montreal H3G 2A8, Canada
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Charles J. Limb;
Charles J. Limb
2
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine
, 2233 Post Street, San Francisco, California 94115, USA
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Monita Chatterjee;
Monita Chatterjee
3
Auditory Prostheses and Perception Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital
, 555 North 30th Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131, USA
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Vincent L. Gracco
Vincent L. Gracco
4
Haskins Laboratories
, 300 George Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
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a)
Electronic mail: mickael.deroche@mcgill.ca
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 142, 1739–1755 (2017)
Article history
Received:
February 24 2017
Accepted:
September 12 2017
Citation
Mickael L. D. Deroche, Charles J. Limb, Monita Chatterjee, Vincent L. Gracco; Similar abilities of musicians and non-musicians to segregate voices by fundamental frequency. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 October 2017; 142 (4): 1739–1755. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5005496
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