Abstract
Listeners show perceptual benefits (faster and/or more accurate responses) when perceiving speech spoken by a single talker versus multiple talkers, known as talker adaptation. While near-exclusively studied in speech and with talkers, some aspects of talker adaptation might reflect domain-general processes. Music, like speech, is a sound class replete with acoustic variation, such as a multitude of pitch and instrument possibilities. Thus, it was hypothesized that perceptual benefits from structure in the acoustic signal (i.e., hearing the same sound source on every trial) are not specific to speech but rather a general auditory response. Forty nonmusician participants completed a simple musical task that mirrored talker adaptation paradigms. Low- or high-pitched notes were presented in single- and mixed-instrument blocks. Reflecting both music research on pitch and timbre interdependence and mirroring traditional “talker” adaptation paradigms, listeners were faster to make their pitch judgments when presented with a single instrument timbre relative to when the timbre was selected from one of four instruments from trial to trial. A second experiment ruled out the possibility that participants were responding faster to the specific instrument chosen as the single-instrument timbre. Consistent with general theoretical approaches to perception, perceptual benefits from signal structure are not limited to speech.
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Notes
Since participants for Experiment 1 were recruited without regard for their musical training, an alternative analysis was conducted including the participants who did not meet the 90% accuracy criterion in the single block. Participants were still more accurate and responded faster in the single instrument block (M acc = 77.6%, 95% CI [69.9%, 85.3%]; M RT = 909 ms, 95% CI [833, 985]) than the mixed block (M acc = 71.7%, [67.1%, 76.4%]; M RT = 1,161, 95% CI [1,067, 1,254]). Mixed effects models using the same architecture as described in the main text revealed the differences across the blocks were significant (accuracy model: \(\widehat{\mathrm{\upbeta}}\) = −1.25, 95% CI [−2.12, −0.42], Z = −3.17; RT model: \(\widehat{\mathrm{\upbeta}}\) = .28, 95% CI [0.18, 0.37], t = 6.08). Thus, the same pattern of results was observed with or without the single-instrument block performance criterion.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Lauren Girouard-Hallam, Raina Isaacs, Vitor Neves Guimaraes, and Carolyn Mervis for feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript, and Aidan Shorey, Micki Shorey, and Ralph Shorey for providing instrument photos for Fig. 1. The authors declare no financial support nor any conflict of interests pertaining to this manuscript.
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Shorey, A.E., King, C.J., Theodore, R.M. et al. Talker adaptation or “talker” adaptation? Musical instrument variability impedes pitch perception. Atten Percept Psychophys 85, 2488–2501 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02722-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02722-4