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Functional transfer of musical training to speech perception in adverse acoustical situations

Shen, Jianming

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2014, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Speech and Hearing Science.
Listeners can perceive interrupted speech as continuous, provided that the gap is masked by another extraneous sound such as white noise or a cough. This phenomenon, known as the continuity illusion or phonemic restoration, is an adaptive function of our auditory system that facilitates speech comprehension in adverse acoustic situations. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that the effect of music training, as manifested in one’s enhanced ability to anticipate envelope variation and thus perceive continuity in degraded music, can transfer to phonemic restoration. We posited that this cross-domain extension is largely due to the overlapping neural networks associated with rhythm processing in the lower-level central auditory system. Musicians and non-musicians listened to physically interrupted short music tunes and English words which contained a segment that was replaced by white noise, and judged whether they heard the stimuli as interrupted or continuous through the noise. Their perceptual threshold of continuity— here defined as the interruption duration at which they perceived the sound as continuous by a 50% chance—for each session was measured and calculated based on an adaptive procedure. Results revealed that musicians tolerated longer interruptions than non-musicians during the speech session, but not during the music session. The results partially support the existence of functional transfer of musical training to speech perception. Meanwhile, the interruption thresholds in both sessions were highly correlated, which is consistent with the hypothetical overlap between neural networks related to music and speech processing. These findings may have implications for developing learning tools and strategies to support perception of spoken language in adverse listening situations.
Lawrence Feth, Dr. (Advisor)
Antoine Shahin, Dr. (Committee Member)
72 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Shen, J. (2014). Functional transfer of musical training to speech perception in adverse acoustical situations [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405107128

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Shen, Jianming. Functional transfer of musical training to speech perception in adverse acoustical situations. 2014. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405107128.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Shen, Jianming. "Functional transfer of musical training to speech perception in adverse acoustical situations." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405107128

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)