The role of timing deviations and target position uncertainty on temporal attending in a serial auditory pitch discrimination task

Listeners were presented with sequences of tones that ascended in semitone intervals. On each trial a single target tone in the sequence was displaced in pitch, and listeners were required to indicate whether the target tone was higher or lower than its normal pitch. Task constraints, specifically target serial position uncertainty and the probabilistic relationship between time deviations and target tones, were varied in order to determine the impact of task constraints on temporal attending strategy. When listeners had no advance knowledge of the serial position of the target, and early and late targets provided information regarding target serial position, performance was better for early and late target trials than for on-time target trials (Experiment 1). When listeners had no advance knowledge of the serial position of the target, and early and late temporal deviations provided no information regarding target serial position, performance for late target trials was superior to that for early and on-time target trials (Experiment 2). Finally, when target serial position uncertainty was eliminated, performance was equivalent across all three levels of target timing (early, on time, late). The results indicate that performance profiles based on stimulus timing properties are affected by various task constraints as well as by stimulus properties.     

The integration of stimulus dimensions in the perception of music

A central aim of cognitive psychology is to explain how we integrate stimulus dimensions into a unified percept, but how the dimensions of pitch and time combine in the perception of music remains a largely unresolved issue. The goal of this study was to test the effect of varying the degree of conformity to dimensional structure in pitch and time (specifically, tonality and metre) on goodness ratings and classifications of melodies. The pitches and durations of melodies were either presented in their original order, as a reordered sequence, or replaced with random elements. Musically trained and untrained participants (24 each) rated melodic goodness, attending selectively to the dimensions of pitch, time, or both. Also, 24 trained participants classified whether or not the melodies were tonal, metric, or both. Pitch and temporal manipulations always influenced responses, but participants successfully emphasized either dimension in accordance with instructions. Effects of pitch and time were mostly independent for selective attention conditions, but more interactive when evaluating both dimensions. When interactions occurred, the effect of either dimension increased as the other dimension conformed more to its original structure. Relative main effect sizes (| pitch η² – time η² |) predicted the strength of pitch–time interactions (pitch?×?time η²); interactions were stronger when main effect sizes were more evenly matched. These results have implications for dimensional integration in several domains. Relative main effect size could serve as an indicator of dimensional salience, such that interactions are more likely when dimensions are equally salient.     

Cross-cultural perspectives on pitch memory

We examined effects of age and culture on children's memory for the pitch level of familiar music. Canadian 9- and 10-year-olds distinguished the original pitch level of familiar television theme songs from foils that were pitch-shifted by one semitone, whereas 5- to 8-year-olds failed to do so (Experiment 1). In contrast, Japanese 5- and 6-year-olds distinguished the pitch-shifted foils from the originals, performing significantly better than same-age Canadian children (Experiment 2). Moreover, Japanese 6-year-olds were more accurate than their 5-year-old counterparts. These findings challenge the prevailing view of enhanced pitch memory during early life. We consider factors that may account for Japanese children's superior performance such as their use of a pitch accent language (Japanese) rather than a stress accent language (English) and their experience with musical pitch labels.     

Domain-specific responses to power-based interaction

Variations in power-relevant information-processing (response latency on a lexical-decision making task), acoustical responses (vocal amplitude and pitch), and affective responses were measured as a function of a power-relevant priming manipulation, and gender. When participants were primed for a power challenge (as opposed to other challenges), males (but not females) manifested exceptionally fast processing of power-relevant adjectives - suggesting the greater accessibility of power cues for males. Regardless of gender, participants primed for a power challenge manifested lower vocal amplitude (consistent with a de-escalating strategy). However, only women manifested an elevated pitch level and self-reported apprehension - indicating that women, even more than men show a de-escalating response to a power challenge.     

Brain correlates of early auditory processing are attenuated by expectations for time and pitch

The present study investigated how auditory processing is modulated by expectations for time and pitch by analyzing reaction times and event-related potentials (ERPs). In two experiments, tone sequences were presented to the participants, who had to discriminate whether the last tone of the sequence contained a short gap or was continuous (Experiment 1: go/nogo, Experiment 2: choice reaction). Expectations were induced by varying the temporal and pitch regularity of the sequence. Results were consistent across both experiments. Expectations for both time and pitch were associated with faster responding. Both temporal and pitch expectations led to an attenuation of the auditory N1, thus indicating a modulation of early, perceptual processing by temporal and pitch expectations. Effects of temporal expectations were also evident in a P300-like deflection, suggesting that temporal expectations also affect decision- or response-related processing stages.     

Seeing what you hear: Visual feedback improves pitch recognition

The present study examined the effect of visual feedback on the ability to recognise and consolidate pitch information. We trained two groups of nonmusicians to play a piano piece by ear, having one group receiving uninterrupted audiovisual feedback, while allowing the other only to hear, but not see their hand on the keyboard. Results indicate that subjects for whom visual information was deprived showed significantly poorer ability to recognise pitches from the musical piece they had learned. These results are interesting since pitch recognition ability would not intuitively seem to rely on visual feedback. In addition, we show that subjects with previous experience in computer touch-typing made fewer errors during training when trained with no visual feedback, but did not show improved pitch recognition ability posttraining. Our results demonstrate how sensory redundancy increases robustness of learning, and further encourage the use of audiovisual training procedures for facilitating the learning of new skills.     

Binding “what” and “where” in auditory working memory: An asymmetrical association between sound identity and sound location

Contrasting results in visual and auditory working memory studies suggest that the mechanisms of association between location and identity of stimuli depend on the sensory modality of the input. In this auditory study, we tested whether the association of two features both encoded in the “what” stream is different from the association between a “what” and a “where” feature. In an old–new recognition task, blindfolded participants were presented with sequences of sounds varying in timbre, pitch and location. They were required to judge if either the timbre, pitch or location of a single-probe stimulus was identical or different to the timbre, pitch or location of one of the sounds of the previous sequence. Only variations in one of the three features were relevant for the task, whereas the other two features could vary, with task-irrelevant changes. Results showed that task-irrelevant variations in the “what” features (either timbre or pitch) caused an impaired recognition of sound location and in the other task-relevant “what” feature, whereas changes in sound location did not affect the recognition of either one of the “what” features. We conclude that the identity of sounds is incidentally processed even when not required by the task, whereas sound location is not maintained when task irrelevant.     

Functional ear (a)symmetry in brainstem neural activity relevant to encoding of voice pitch: a precursor for hemispheric specialization?

Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and right ear of 15 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese using two synthetic speech stimuli that differ in linguistic status of tone. One represented a native lexical tone (Tone 2: T2); the other, T2′, a nonnative variant in which the pitch contour was a mirror image of T2 with the same starting and ending frequencies. Two 40-ms portions of f₀ contours were selected in order to compare two regions (R1, early; R2 late) differing in pitch acceleration rate and perceptual saliency. In R2, linguistic status effects revealed that T2 exhibited a larger degree of FFR rightward ear asymmetry as reflected in f₀ amplitude relative to T2′. Relative to midline (ear asymmetry = 0), the only ear asymmetry reaching significance was that favoring left ear stimulation elicited by T2′. By left- and right-ear stimulation separately, FFRs elicited by T2 were larger than T2′ in the right ear only. Within T2′, FFRs elicited by the earlier region were larger than the later in both ears. Within T2, no significant differences in FFRS were observed between regions in either ear. Collectively, these findings support the idea that origins of cortical processing preferences for perceptually-salient portions of pitch are rooted in early, preattentive stages of processing in the brainstem.     

The role of the auditory brainstem in processing linguistically-relevant pitch patterns

Historically, the brainstem has been neglected as a part of the brain involved in language processing. We review recent evidence of language-dependent effects in pitch processing based on comparisons of native vs. nonnative speakers of a tonal language from electrophysiological recordings in the auditory brainstem. We argue that there is enhancing of linguistically-relevant pitch dimensions or features well before the auditory signal reaches the cerebral cortex. We propose that long-term experience with a tone language sharpens the tuning characteristics of neurons along the pitch axis with enhanced sensitivity to linguistically-relevant, rapidly changing sections of pitch contours. Though not specific to a speech context, experience-dependent brainstem mechanisms for pitch representation are clearly sensitive to particular aspects of pitch contours that native speakers of a tone language have been exposed to. Such experience-dependent effects on lower-level sensory processing are compatible with more integrated, hierarchically organized pathways to language and the brain.     

Congenital amusia: A short-term memory deficit for non-verbal,but not verbal sounds

Congenital amusia refers to a lifelong disorder of music processing and is linked to pitch-processing deficits. The present study investigated congenital amusics’ short-term memory for tones, musical timbres and words. Sequences of five events (tones, timbres or words) were presented in pairs and participants had to indicate whether the sequences were the same or different. The performance of congenital amusics confirmed a memory deficit for tone sequences, but showed normal performance for word sequences. For timbre sequences, amusics’ memory performance was impaired in comparison to matched controls. Overall timbre performance was found to be correlated with melodic contour processing (as assessed by the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia). The present findings show that amusics’ deficits extend to non-verbal sound material other than pitch, in this case timbre, while not affecting memory for verbal material. This is in line with previous suggestions about the domain-specificity of congenital amusia.