The speech-to-song (STS) illusion is a phenomenon in which some spoken utterances perceptually transform to song after repetition [Deutsch, Henthorn, and Lapidis (2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129, 2245–2252]. Tierney, Dick, Deutsch, and Sereno [(2013). Cereb. Cortex. 23, 249–254] developed a set of stimuli where half tend to transform to perceived song with repetition and half do not. Those that transform and those that do not can be understood to induce a musical or linguistic mode of listening, respectively. By comparing performance on perceptual tasks related to transforming and non-transforming utterances, the current study examines whether the musical mode of listening entails higher sensitivity to temporal regularity and better absolute pitch (AP) memory compared to the linguistic mode. In experiment 1, inter-stimulus intervals within STS trials were steady, slightly variable, or highly variable. Participants reported how temporally regular utterance entrances were. In experiment 2, participants performed an AP memory task after a blocked STS exposure phase. Utterances identically matching those used in the exposure phase were targets among transposed distractors in the test phase. Results indicate that listeners exhibit heightened awareness of temporal manipulations but reduced awareness of AP manipulations to transforming utterances. This methodology establishes a framework for implicitly differentiating musical from linguistic perception.
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December 2017
December 14 2017
Musical and linguistic listening modes in the speech-to-song illusion bias timing perception and absolute pitch memory
Emily Graber;
1
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University
, 660 Lomita Court, Stanford, California 94305, USA
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Rhimmon Simchy-Gross;
Rhimmon Simchy-Gross
2
Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas
, 216 Memorial Hall, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA
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Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
3
Department of Music, University of Arkansas
, Music Building 201, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA
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Electronic mail: [email protected]
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 142, 3593–3602 (2017)
Article history
Received:
April 21 2017
Accepted:
November 19 2017
Citation
Emily Graber, Rhimmon Simchy-Gross, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis; Musical and linguistic listening modes in the speech-to-song illusion bias timing perception and absolute pitch memory. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 December 2017; 142 (6): 3593–3602. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5016806
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