Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
research-article

The effect of musical expertise on whistled vowel identification

Published: 17 July 2024 Publication History
  • Get Citation Alerts
  • Highlights

    Musicians and non-musicians process the whistled speech signal differently.
    Musical expertise affects whistled vowel perception with advantages for lower vowels.
    Inter-whistler variation affects both musicians and non-musicians.
    Musical advantages are more marked with a wider whistled production range and stable frequencies.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we looked at the impact of musical experience on whistled vowel categorization by native French speakers. Whistled speech, a natural, yet modified speech type, augments speech amplitude while transposing the signal to a range of fairly high frequencies, i.e. 1 to 4 kHz. The whistled vowels are simple pitches of different heights depending on the vowel position, and generally represent the most stable part of the signal, just as in modal speech. They are modulated by consonant coarticulation(s), resulting in characteristic pitch movements. This change in speech mode can liken the speech signal to musical notes and their modulations; however, the mechanisms used to categorize whistled phonemes rely on abstract phonological knowledge and representation. Here we explore the impact of musical expertise on such a process by focusing on four whistled vowels (/i, e, a, o/) which have been used in previous experiments with non-musicians. We also included inter-speaker production variations, adding variability to the vowel pitches. Our results showed that all participants categorize whistled vowels well over chance, with musicians showing advantages for the middle whistled vowels (/a/ and /e/) as well as for the lower whistled vowel /o/. The whistler variability also affects musicians more than non-musicians and impacts their advantage, notably for the vowels /e/ and /o/. However, we find no specific training advantage for musicians over the whole experiment, but rather training effects for /a/ and /e/ when taking into account all participants. This suggests that though musical experience may help structure the vowel hierarchy when the whistler has a larger range, this advantage cannot be generalized when listening to another whistler. Thus, the transfer of musical knowledge present in this task only influences certain aspects of speech perception.

    References

    [1]
    T. Bent, D. Kewley-Port, S. Fergusson, Across-talker effects on non-native listeners’ vowel perception in noise, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128 (5) (2010) 3142–3151.,.
    [2]
    G.M. Bidelman, A. Krishnan, Effects of reverberation on brainstem representation of speech in musicians and non-musicians, Brain Res. 1355 (2010) 112–125,.
    [3]
    R.G. Busnel, A. Classe, Whistled Languages, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heideleberg, 1976.
    [4]
    Diaz, D. 2008. El lenguaje silbado en la isla de El Hierro. ‎ Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Excmo, Cabildo Insular de El Hierro.
    [5]
    S. Hallam, 21st century conceptions of musical ability, Psychol. Music. 38 (3) (2010) 308–330,.
    [6]
    A.S. House, G. Fairbanks, The influence of consonant environment upon the secondary acoustical characteristics of vowels, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 25 (1953) 105–113,.
    [7]
    N. Kraus, B. Chandrasekaran, Music training for the development of auditory skills, Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 11 (2010) 599–605,.
    [8]
    C. Leroy, Étude de phonétique comparative de la langue turque sifflée et parlée, Revue de Phonétique Appliquée 14/15 (1970) 119–161.
    [9]
    C. Liang, B. Earl, I. Thompson, K. Whitaker, S. Cahn, J. Xiang, Q.J. Fu, F. Zhang, Musicians are better than non-musicians in frequency change detection: behavioral and electrophysiological evidence, Front. Neurosci. 25 (10) (2016) 464,.
    [10]
    Meyer, J., 2005. Description typologique et intelligibilité des langues sifflées: Approche linguistique et bioacoustique. Ph.D. dissertation. Lyon: Université Lyon 2.
    [11]
    J. Meyer, Typology and acoustic strategies of whistled languages: Phonetic comparison and perceptual cues of whistled vowels, J. Int. Phon. Assoc. 38 (1) (2008) 69–94,.
    [12]
    J. Meyer, Whistled Languages, A Worldwide Inquiry on Human Whistled Speech, Springer, 2015.
    [13]
    J. Meyer, L. Dentel, F. Meunier, Categorization of natural whistled vowels by naïve listeners of different language background, Front. Psychol. 8 (2017),.
    [14]
    J. Meyer, L. Dentel, S. Gerber, R. Ridouane, A perceptual study of CV syllables in both spoken and whistled speech: a Tashlhiyt Berber perspective. INTERSPEECH 2019 –20th Annual Confer, Int. Speech Commun. Assoc. (2019) 2296–2299,.
    [15]
    C.G.M. Ott, N. Langer, M.S. Oechslin, M. Meyer, L. Jäncke, Processing of voiced and unvoiced acoustic stimuli in musicians, Front. Psychol. 2 (2011) 195,.
    [16]
    I. Peretz, M. Coltheart, Modularity of music processing, Nat. Neurosci. 6 (7) (2003),.
    [17]
    A. Parbery-Clark, E. Skoe, C. Lam, N. Kraus, Musician enhancement for speech-in-noise, Ear. Hear. 30 (6) (2009) 653–661,.
    [18]
    A. Parbery-Clark, A. Tierney, D.L. Strait, N. Kraus, Musicians have fine-tuned neural distinction of speech syllables, Neuroscience (2012) 111–119,.
    [19]
    A. Rialland, Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages, Phonology. 22 (2) (2005) 237–271.
    [20]
    D.A. Ross, J.C. Gore, L.E. Marks, Absolute pitch: music and beyond, E&B 7 (4) (2005) 578–601,.
    [21]
    E.G. Schellenberg, M.W. Weiss, Music and cognitive abilities, in: D. Deutsch (Ed.), The Psychology of Music, 3rd ed., Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2013, pp. 499–550,.
    [22]
    L.R. Slevc, A. Miyake, Individual differences in second-language proficiency: does musical ability matter?, Psychol. Sci. 17 (8) (2006) 675–681,.
    [23]
    M.J. Solé, J.J. Ohala, What is and what is not under the control of the speaker. Intrinsic vowel duration, Fougeron C., Kühnert B., D'Imperio M., Vallée N. (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 10, de Gruyter, Berlin, 2010,.
    [24]
    D.L. Strait, N. Kraus, Can you hear me now? Musical training shapes functional brain networks for selective auditory attention and hearing speech in noise, Front. Psychol. 2 (2011) 113,.
    [25]
    S. Swaminathan, E.G. Schellenberg, Musical competence and phoneme perception in a foreign language, Psychon. Bull. Rev. 24 (6) (2017) 1929–1934,.
    [26]
    M. Tervaniemi, L. Janhunen, S. Kruck, V. Putkinen, M. Huotilainen, Auditory profiles of classical, jazz, and rock musicians: genre-specific sensitivity to musical sound features, Front. Psychol. 6 (2016) 1900,.
    [27]
    A. Tran Ngoc, J. Meyer, F Meunier, Whistled Phoneme categorization: the effect of vowel space range, in: A. Botinis (Ed.), Proc. 14th Exling Conference, Athens, Greece, 2024, 115-118.
    [28]
    A. Tran Ngoc, J Meyer, F Meunier, Whistled vowel identification by French speakers, in: INTERSPEECH 2020, 21st Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, 1605-1609, 2020,.
    [29]
    A. Tran Ngoc, F. Meunier, J. Meyer, Testing perceptual flexibility in speech through the categorization of whistled Spanish consonants by French speakers, JASA Exp. Lett. 2 (2022) 405–413,. 095201.
    [30]
    W.A. van Dommelen, V. Hazan, Impact of talker variability on word recognition in non-native listeners, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132 (2012) 1690–1699,.
    [31]
    L. Varnet, T. Wang, C. Peter, F. Meunier, M. Hoen, How musical expertise shapes speech perception: evidence from auditory classification images, Sci. Rep. 5 (1) (2015),.
    [32]
    J. Zaar, T. Dau, Sources of variability in consonant perception of normal hearing listeners, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138 (3) (2015) 1253–1268,.
    [33]
    J.D. Zhang, M. Susino, G.E. McPherson, E. Schubert, The definition of a musician in music psychology: a literature review and the six-year rule, Psychol. Music. 48 (3) (2020) 389–409,.

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Speech Communication
    Speech Communication  Volume 159, Issue C
    Apr 2024
    90 pages

    Publisher

    Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.

    Netherlands

    Publication History

    Published: 17 July 2024

    Author Tags

    1. Vowel categorization
    2. Whistled speech
    3. Acoustic cues
    4. Musicians
    5. Musical experience
    6. Speech perception

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • 0
      Total Citations
    • 0
      Total Downloads
    • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 11 Aug 2024

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    View Options

    View options

    Get Access

    Login options

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media