The effect of augmented auditory feedback on pitch accuracy by untrained adults

Abstract

Accuracy in pitch production is fundamental to both singing and language. Since accurate control of pitch is a complicated motor control process, no conclusions can be drawn yet for the reasons why some individuals have trouble producing accurate pitches in singing, although different possible causes have been proposed in the literature such as deficits in pitch perception, pitch memory and mismatch of pitch range. Additionally, since auditory feedback plays a crucial role in the pitch control, some behavioral experiments have been conducted in the literature that involve manipulation of auditory feedback so as to remedy those with inaccurate pitch during singing but the effects varied. However, those studies in the literature had various limitations and mostly recruited participants who were speakers of non-tonal languages. The present study investigated the effect of augmented auditory feedback (AAF) as a method of feedback manipulation on pitch accuracy as well as its relationship with the three possible causes for pitch inaccuracy mentioned above. A total of 43 tonal-language-speaking adult participants who had no formal training of singing were recruited to participant in two tasks to measure their pitch accuracy: single-tone pitch matching and singing a familiar song. All participants were native speakers of tonal languages: Mandarin or Cantonese. The results showed that pitch accuracy was not significantly improved by AAF although moderately inaccurate singers seemed to benefit consistently in pitch matching task. The post-hoc analysis revealed that the intertrial consistency of the singer’s performance was significantly improved for inaccurate singers in both tasks. As for the causes for pitch inaccuracy, both pitch perception and pitch memory were found to have moderate correlation with pitch inaccuracy while mismatch of vocal range of the participants and the pitch targets seemed to be a major cause for most of the inaccurate participants.