Music Perception and Speech-in-Noise Skills of Typical Hearing and Cochlear Implant Listeners

Purpose Adult cochlear implant (CI) users rate music as one of the most important auditory stimuli, second to speech perception. However, few studies simultaneously examine music perception and speech-in-noise perception in adult CI recipients. This study explores the effect of auditory status on music perception and speech-in-noise perception recognition in noise as well as the relationship among music engagement, music perception, and speech-in-noise perception. Method Participants include 10 adults with typical hearing (TH) and 10 adults with long-term CI use. All participants completed the Music-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire, which assesses subjective music experiences and their importance; the Pitch Direction Discrimination, Familiar Melody Recognition, and Timbre Recognition subtests of the Clinical Assessment of Music Perception for Cochlear Implants; the Unfamiliar Melody Recognition subtest of the Profile of Music Perception Skills; and the Bamford–Kowal–Bench Speech-in-Noise Test . Results The TH group significantly outperformed the CI group for speech-in-noise perception and on all four music perception tasks. The CI group exhibited not only significantly poorer mean scores but also greater variability in performance compared to the TH group. Only Familiar Melody Recognition and Unfamiliar Melody Recognition subtests significantly correlated with speech-in-noise scores. Conclusions Patients and professionals should not assume speech perception and music perception in adult CI users derive from the same auditory or cognitive foundations. The lack of significant relationships among music engagement, music perception, and speech-in-noise perception scores in adult CI users suggests this population enjoys music despite poor and variable performance in discrete music tasks.

Music Listening Habits and Music Perception Abilities of Prelingually Deafened Adolescent Cochlear Implant Recipients

Background Music is a very important art form that can evoke strong emotions and involvement with it can have a considerable impact on cochlear implant (CI) recipients' quality of life. It is well known that music perception is limited in CI with fully electric hearing and CI recipients have significantly poorer music-appraisal ability when compared with normal hearing subjects. Considering the importance of music on the life of an adolescent and negative impact of hearing loss on mental health, understanding and improving music listening habits and perception abilities can have a positive impact on the mental health of CI user adolescents. Purpose This study aims to evaluate music listening habits and music perception abilities of prelingually deafened adolescent CI users to reveal the relationship between self-reported assessment and psychophysical measurement. Research Design The psychophysical measures of music perception and self-reported music listening habits of adolescent CI users were obtained. Study Sample Twenty-nine prelingually deafened adolescent CI users were evaluated in this study. Data Collection and Analysis The Turkish Clinical Assessment of Music Perception (T-CAMP) test was used to evaluate music perception abilities. These abilities were evaluated with a three-item questionnaire assessing enjoyment of music, listening habits, and comprehension of lyrics. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated to assess the relationship between the T-CAMP subtests and questionnaire items. Results Statistically significant correlations were observed between the melody-recognition subtest of T-CAMP and all three questionnaire items. The correlation between the enjoyment and rate items on the questionnaire was also statistically significant. Conclusion The present study shows that adolescent CI users also enjoy and listen to music in ways similar to postlingually deafened adult CI users. It also demonstrates that melody-recognition abilities have a significant relationship with music enjoyment and listening habits in prelingually deafened adolescent CI users.

Gehørtrening og læring

I artikkelen presenteres en undersøkelse blant en mindre gruppe lærerstudenter av utbyttet av en utbredt gehørmetode innenfor musikkundervisning. Studenter i lærerutdanningen har i en årrekke fått undervisning i trinnsang for å lettere kunne lese noter og forstå melodiske mønstre. Denne undersøkelsen avdekker hvor effektiv gehørmetoden som brukes er, og hvor mye øving som skal til for å få fremgang. To studentgrupper var med i undersøkelsen. Én gruppe fikk undervisning i gehørmetoden, den andre ikke. Funn fra tidligere studier tyder på at denne metoden er effektiv i korsammenheng. Resultatene, målt gjennom pre- og posttest i notelesing og diktat, viser at lærerstudenter som øver til sammen cirka 1000 minutter i en periode over 7 måneder opplever å lese noter bedre og oppfatte tonetrinn lettere. Nøkkelord: trinnsang, notelesing, melodiforståelse, lærerstudenter Ear training and learning outcome AbstractThis article presents a study among a smaller group of teacher students on the outcome of a widespread ear training method used in music education. For many years, students in teacher education have learned numerical sight-singing in order to facilitate score reading and understanding of melodic patterns. This study is about measuring how effective this method is, and how much practice is required in order to attain progress. Two relatively similar student groups were included in the survey. One group had ear training, the other did not. Findings from earlier studies indicate that this method is effective in choirs. The results from this study, measured in a pre- and a post-test in score reading and melodic dictation, show that teacher students who practice around 1000 minutes over a 7-month period, are more fluent and accurate in score reading and the ability to recognize melodic patterns. Keywords: numerical sight-singing, score reading, melody recognition, teacher students

“I hear with my little ear something…": Enhanced performance of absolute pitch musicians in an interleaved melody recognition test

Autistic people exhibit enhanced abilities to find and extract visual or auditory figures out of a meaningful whole (disembedding). Studies have shown heightened autistic traits in professional musicians with absolute pitch (AP). This study investigates whether such musicians show an advantage in an interleaved melody recognition task (IMRT).A total of N=59 professional musicians (AP=27) participated in the study. In each trial a probe melody was followed by an interleaved sequence. Subjects had to indicate as to whether the probe melody was present in the interleaved sequence. Sensitivity index d’ and response bias c were calculated according to signal detection theory. Additionally, a pitch adjustment test measuring fine-graded differences in absolute pitch proficiency, the Autism-Spectrum-Quotient and a visual embedded figures test were conducted.AP performance was enhanced overall compared to RP. Absolute pitch proficiency, visual disembedding ability and musicality predicted approximately 39.2% of variance in the interleaved melody recognition test. No correlations were found between IMRT and autistic traits.The stable pitch-label associations of AP might serve as additional sensory cues during pre-attentive processing in recognizing interleaved melodies. Results are in line with a detailed-oriented cognitive style and enhanced perceptional functioning of AP musicians similar to that observed in autism.

Context effects of background babbling on memory for melodies

Disruptive effects of background noise on memory have been thoroughly investigated. Potential beneficial context effects of background noise on memory, however, have received far less attention. Here, we explore whether and how unintelligible multiple talker background babbling affects melody recognition. Participants continuously listened to melodies, each of which appeared twice during the experiment. After each melody participants were asked to indicate whether they had heard the melody previously in the experiment. The presence or absence of background noise during first or second melody presentation was manipulated in four conditions (Clear-Clear, Clear-Noise, Noise-Clear, Noise-Noise). We measured recognition performance as well as cumulative disruptive interference between first and second melody presentation. Mixed effects models revealed that recognition in Clear-Clear was significantly better compared to Noise-Clear and Noise-Noise, but not compared to Clear-Noise. Clear-Noise showed descriptively better recognition performance than Noise-Noise, however this comparison did not reach statistical significance. Recognition performance in Clear-Noise was significantly better than in Noise-Clear, suggesting that noise during encoding affects recognition performance more strongly than noise during retrieval. Furthermore, cumulative disruptive interference was stronger in mismatching contexts. Our results suggest that if possible, background noise should be avoided as it negatively affects memory performance. However, if encoding is likely to take place in a noisy environment, then presenting background noise during retrieval may be beneficial. This is because matching background noise during encoding and retrievals appears to reduce cumulative disruptive interference.

Resilient memory for melodies: The number of intervening melodies does not influence novel melody recognition

In many memory domains, a decrease in recognition performance between the first and second presentation of an object is observed as the number of intervening items increases. However, this effect is not universal. Within the auditory domain, this form of interference has been demonstrated in word and single-note recognition, but has yet to be substantiated using relatively complex musical material such as a melody. Indeed, it is becoming clear that music shows intriguing properties when it comes to memory. This study investigated how the number of intervening items influences memory for melodies. In Experiments 1, 2 and 3, one melody was presented per trial in a continuous recognition paradigm. After each melody, participants indicated whether they had heard the melody in the experiment before by responding “old” or “new.” In Experiment 4, participants rated perceived familiarity for every melody without being told that melodies reoccur. In four experiments using two corpora of music, two different memory tasks, transposed and untransposed melodies and up to 195 intervening melodies, no sign of a disruptive effect from the number of intervening melodies beyond the first was observed. We propose a new “regenerative multiple representations” conjecture to explain why intervening items increase interference in recognition memory for most domains but not music. This conjecture makes several testable predictions and has the potential to strengthen our understanding of domain specificity in human memory, while moving one step closer to explaining the “paradox” that is memory for melody.

The role of divided attention and expertise in melody recognition

When attention is divided during memory encoding, performance tends to suffer. The nature of this performance decrement, however, is domain-dependent and often governed by domain-specific expertise. In this study, 111 participants with differing levels of musical expertise (professional musicians, amateur musicians, and non-musicians) were presented with novel melodies under full- or divided-attention conditions in a continuous melody-recognition task. As hypothesized, melody recognition was modulated by musical expertise, as greater expertise was associated with better performance. Recognition performance increased with every additional presentation of a target melody. The divided-attention condition required concurrently performing a non-music related digit-monitoring task while simultaneously listening to the melodies. Memory performance decreased universally in all groups in the divided-attention condition; however, intriguingly musicians also performed significantly better in the concurrent digit-monitoring task than non-musicians. Results provide insight into the role of expertise, attention, and memory in the musical domain, and are discussed in terms of attentional resource models. In light of resource models, an asymmetrical non-linear trade-off between two simultaneous tasks is proposed to explain the present findings.

Generality of the Memory Advantage for Vocal Melodies

Children and adults, with or without music training, exhibit better memory for vocal melodies (without lyrics) than for instrumental melodies (Weiss, Schellenberg, Trehub, & Dawber, 2015; Weiss, Trehub, & Schellenberg, 2012; Weiss, Trehub, Schellenberg, & Habashi, 2016; Weiss, Vanzella, Schellenberg, & Trehub, 2015). In the present study, we compared adults’ memory for vocal and instrumental melodies, as before, but with two additional singers, one female (same pitch level as the original female) and one male (7 semitones lower). In an exposure phase, 90 participants (M = 4.1 years training, SD = 3.9) rated their liking of 24 melodies—6 each in voice, piano, banjo, and marimba. After a short break, they heard the same melodies plus 24 timbre-matched foils (6 per timbre) and rated their recognition of each melody. Recognition was better for vocal melodies than for melodies in every other timbre, replicating previous findings. Importantly, the memory advantage was comparable across voices, despite the fact that liking ratings for vocal melodies differed by singer. Our results provide support for the notion that the vocal advantage in memory for melodies is independent of the idiosyncrasies of specific singers or of vocal attractiveness, arising instead from enhanced processing of a biologically significant timbre.