- Acoustic Characteristics used to Differentiate Speech from Song and Individual Factors that Impact their Effectiveness
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Abstract:
- There are many acoustic differences between speech and song, such as frequency range, average fundamental frequency, pitch stability, and rhythmic regularity. Previous studies have shown that musical and linguistic knowledge are recruited differently, but no studies have addressed what specific acoustic features people use to differentiate between speech and song. Our study is designed to determine what acoustic characteristics are used to distinguish speech from song, and to elucidate whether individual factors, such as musical training and tonal language experience, have an effect on these characteristics. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rank 15 acoustic characteristics according to their importance in differentiating between speech and song. After listening to ambiguous sounding stimuli, participants were asked to re-rank the characteristics. Results showed that melody, beat, and rhythmic regularity were ranked significantly higher (X2=92.69, p<0.001) than other characteristics, but these characteristics were not statistically different in their relative rankings to each other. From these results, Experiment 2 had participants categorize sentences as speech or song when we parametrically manipulated the melodic salience of each syllable on a continuum from speech-to-song and from song-to-speech. This was done by manipulating the spoken pitch contour to match the sung pitch contour and vice versa. Decreasing melodic salience resulted in a greater proportion of speech responses, with melodic manipulation and directionality of manipulation having a significant effect on proportion of speech responses (p<0.0001). Melodic salience had a greater effect on perception in the song-to-speech direction (d=2.67), likely due to a combination of spectral and temporal characteristics affecting stimulus categorization. Musical training and tonal language experience had no effect on response categorization. Results from this study provide insight on the specific cognitive processes used for effective communication in the form of speech and song and contributes to our overall understanding about the way sound is perceived.
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