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.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
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
Search for other works by this author on:
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
Search for other works by this author on:
Monita Chatterjee;
Monita Chatterjee
3
Auditory Prostheses and Perception Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital
, 555 North 30th Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
Vincent L. Gracco
Vincent L. Gracco
4
Haskins Laboratories
, 300 George Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
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
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Citing articles via
A survey of sound source localization with deep learning methods
Pierre-Amaury Grumiaux, Srđan Kitić, et al.
Co-speech head nods are used to enhance prosodic prominence at different levels of narrow focus in French
Christopher Carignan, Núria Esteve-Gibert, et al.
Source and propagation modelling scenarios for environmental impact assessment: Model verification
Michael A. Ainslie, Robert M. Laws, et al.
Related Content
Musicians and non-musicians are equally adept at perceiving masked speech
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (January 2015)
Maximum acceptable vibrato excursion as a function of vibrato rate in musicians and non-musicians
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. (August 2014)
Assessing subclinical hearing loss in musicians and nonmusicians using
auditory brainstem responses and speech perception measures
JASA Express Lett. (July 2023)
Does good perception of vocal characteristics relate to better speech-on-speech intelligibility for cochlear implant users?
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (January 2019)
The effect of musicianship, contralateral noise, and ear of presentation on the detection of changes in temporal fine structure
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (July 2019)