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Shorey AE, King CJ, Whiteford KL, Stilp CE. Musical training is not associated with spectral context effects in instrument sound categorization. Atten Percept Psychophys 2024; 86:991-1007. [PMID: 38216848 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02839-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/21/2023] [Indexed: 01/14/2024]
Abstract
Musicians display a variety of auditory perceptual benefits relative to people with little or no musical training; these benefits are collectively referred to as the "musician advantage." Importantly, musicians consistently outperform nonmusicians for tasks relating to pitch, but there are mixed reports as to musicians outperforming nonmusicians for timbre-related tasks. Due to their experience manipulating the timbre of their instrument or voice in performance, we hypothesized that musicians would be more sensitive to acoustic context effects stemming from the spectral changes in timbre across a musical context passage (played by a string quintet then filtered) and a target instrument sound (French horn or tenor saxophone; Experiment 1). Additionally, we investigated the role of a musician's primary instrument of instruction by recruiting French horn and tenor saxophone players to also complete this task (Experiment 2). Consistent with the musician advantage literature, musicians exhibited superior pitch discrimination to nonmusicians. Contrary to our main hypothesis, there was no difference between musicians and nonmusicians in how spectral context effects shaped instrument sound categorization. Thus, musicians may only outperform nonmusicians for some auditory skills relevant to music (e.g., pitch perception) but not others (e.g., timbre perception via spectral differences).
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Affiliation(s)
- Anya E Shorey
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA.
| | - Caleb J King
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA.
| | - Kelly L Whiteford
- Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA
| | - Christian E Stilp
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA
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King CJ, Sharpe CM, Shorey AE, Stilp CE. The effects of variability on context effects and psychometric function slopes in speaking rate normalizationa). THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 155:2099-2113. [PMID: 38483206 PMCID: PMC10942802 DOI: 10.1121/10.0025292] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/22/2023] [Revised: 02/23/2024] [Accepted: 02/27/2024] [Indexed: 03/17/2024]
Abstract
Acoustic context influences speech perception, but contextual variability restricts this influence. Assgari and Stilp [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138, 3023-3032 (2015)] demonstrated that when categorizing vowels, variability in who spoke the preceding context sentence on each trial but not the sentence contents diminished the resulting spectral contrast effects (perceptual shifts in categorization stemming from spectral differences between sounds). Yet, how such contextual variability affects temporal contrast effects (TCEs) (also known as speaking rate normalization; categorization shifts stemming from temporal differences) is unknown. Here, stimuli were the same context sentences and conditions (one talker saying one sentence, one talker saying 200 sentences, 200 talkers saying 200 sentences) used in Assgari and Stilp [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138, 3023-3032 (2015)], but set to fast or slow speaking rates to encourage perception of target words as "tier" or "deer," respectively. In Experiment 1, sentence variability and talker variability each diminished TCE magnitudes; talker variability also produced shallower psychometric function slopes. In Experiment 2, when speaking rates were matched across the 200-sentences conditions, neither TCE magnitudes nor slopes differed across conditions. In Experiment 3, matching slow and fast rates across all conditions failed to produce equal TCEs and slopes everywhere. Results suggest a complex interplay between acoustic, talker, and sentence variability in shaping TCEs in speech perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caleb J King
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA
| | - Chloe M Sharpe
- School of Psychology, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio 45207, USA
| | - Anya E Shorey
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA
| | - Christian E Stilp
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA
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Liu W, Wang T, Huang X. The influences of forward context on stop-consonant perception: The combined effects of contrast and acoustic cue activation? THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2023; 154:1903-1920. [PMID: 37756574 DOI: 10.1121/10.0021077] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/06/2023] [Indexed: 09/29/2023]
Abstract
The perception of the /da/-/ga/ series, distinguished primarily by the third formant (F3) transition, is affected by many nonspeech and speech sounds. Previous studies mainly investigated the influences of context stimuli with frequency bands located in the F3 region and proposed the account of spectral contrast effects. This study examined the effects of context stimuli with bands not in the F3 region. The results revealed that these non-F3-region stimuli (whether with bands higher or lower than the F3 region) mainly facilitated the identification of /ga/; for example, the stimuli (including frequency-modulated glides, sine-wave tones, filtered sentences, and natural vowels) in the low-frequency band (500-1500 Hz) led to more /ga/ responses than those in the low-F3 region (1500-2500 Hz). It is suggested that in the F3 region, context stimuli may act through spectral contrast effects, while in non-F3 regions, context stimuli might activate the acoustic cues of /g/ and further facilitate the identification of /ga/. The combination of contrast and acoustic cue effects can explain more results concerning the forward context influences on the perception of the /da/-/ga/ series, including the effects of non-F3-region stimuli and the imbalanced influences of context stimuli on /da/ and /ga/ perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenli Liu
- Department of Social Psychology, Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, 38 Tongshuo Road, Tianjin 300350, China
| | - Tianyu Wang
- Department of Social Psychology, Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, 38 Tongshuo Road, Tianjin 300350, China
| | - Xianjun Huang
- School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, 105 North West 3rd Ring Road, Beijing 100048, China
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Kahloon L, Shorey AE, King CJ, Stilp CE. Clear speech promotes speaking rate normalization. JASA EXPRESS LETTERS 2023; 3:055205. [PMID: 37219432 PMCID: PMC11303017 DOI: 10.1121/10.0019499] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Accepted: 05/05/2023] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
When speaking in noisy conditions or to a hearing-impaired listener, talkers often use clear speech, which is typically slower than conversational speech. In other research, changes in speaking rate affect speech perception through speaking rate normalization: Slower context sounds encourage perception of subsequent sounds as faster, and vice versa. Here, on each trial, listeners heard a context sentence before the target word (which varied from "deer" to "tier"). Clear and slowed conversational context sentences elicited more "deer" responses than conversational sentences, consistent with rate normalization. Changing speaking styles aids speech intelligibility but might also produce other outcomes that alter sound/word recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lilah Kahloon
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, , , ,
| | - Anya E Shorey
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, , , ,
| | - Caleb J King
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, , , ,
| | - Christian E Stilp
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, , , ,
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Abstract
Perception adapts to the properties of prior stimulation, as illustrated by phenomena such as visual color constancy or speech context effects. In the auditory domain, only little is known about adaptive processes when it comes to the attribute of auditory brightness. Here, we report an experiment that tests whether listeners adapt to spectral colorations imposed on naturalistic music and speech excerpts. Our results indicate consistent contrastive adaptation of auditory brightness judgments on a trial-by-trial basis. The pattern of results suggests that these effects tend to grow with an increase in the duration of the adaptor context but level off after around 8 trials of 2 s duration. A simple model of the response criterion yields a correlation of r = .97 with the measured data and corroborates the notion that brightness perception adapts on timescales that fall in the range of auditory short-term memory. Effects turn out to be similar for spectral filtering based on linear spectral filter slopes and filtering based on a measured transfer function from a commercially available hearing device. Overall, our findings demonstrate the adaptivity of auditory brightness perception under realistic acoustical conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kai Siedenburg
- Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.
| | - Feline Malin Barg
- Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Henning Schepker
- Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
- Starkey Hearing, Eden Prairie, MN, USA
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Stilp CE. Parameterizing spectral contrast effects in vowel categorization using noise contexts. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2021; 150:2806. [PMID: 34717452 DOI: 10.1121/10.0006657] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 09/18/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
When spectra differ between earlier (context) and later (target) sounds, listeners perceive larger spectral changes than are physically present. When context sounds (e.g., a sentence) possess relatively higher frequencies, the target sound (e.g., a vowel sound) is perceived as possessing relatively lower frequencies, and vice versa. These spectral contrast effects (SCEs) are pervasive in auditory perception, but studies traditionally employed contexts with high spectrotemporal variability that made it difficult to understand exactly when context spectral properties biased perception. Here, contexts were speech-shaped noise divided into four consecutive 500-ms epochs. Contexts were filtered to amplify low-F1 (100-400 Hz) or high-F1 (550-850 Hz) frequencies to encourage target perception of /ɛ/ ("bet") or /ɪ/ ("bit"), respectively, via SCEs. Spectral peaks in the context ranged from its initial epoch(s) to its entire duration (onset paradigm), ranged from its final epoch(s) to its entire duration (offset paradigm), or were present for only one epoch (single paradigm). SCE magnitudes increased as spectral-peak durations increased and/or occurred later in the context (closer to the target). Contrary to predictions, brief early spectral peaks still biased subsequent target categorization. Results are compared to related experiments using speech contexts, and physiological and/or psychoacoustic idiosyncrasies of the noise contexts are considered.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian E Stilp
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, 317 Life Sciences Building, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA
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Contributions of natural signal statistics to spectral context effects in consonant categorization. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 83:2694-2708. [PMID: 33987821 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02310-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Speech perception, like all perception, takes place in context. Recognition of a given speech sound is influenced by the acoustic properties of surrounding sounds. When the spectral composition of earlier (context) sounds (e.g., a sentence with more energy at lower third formant [F3] frequencies) differs from that of a later (target) sound (e.g., consonant with intermediate F3 onset frequency), the auditory system magnifies this difference, biasing target categorization (e.g., towards higher-F3-onset /d/). Historically, these studies used filters to force context stimuli to possess certain spectral compositions. Recently, these effects were produced using unfiltered context sounds that already possessed the desired spectral compositions (Stilp & Assgari, 2019, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81, 2037-2052). Here, this natural signal statistics approach is extended to consonant categorization (/g/-/d/). Context sentences were either unfiltered (already possessing the desired spectral composition) or filtered (to imbue specific spectral characteristics). Long-term spectral characteristics of unfiltered contexts were poor predictors of shifts in consonant categorization, but short-term characteristics (last 475 ms) were excellent predictors. This diverges from vowel data, where long-term and shorter-term intervals (last 1,000 ms) were equally strong predictors. Thus, time scale plays a critical role in how listeners attune to signal statistics in the acoustic environment.
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