Search

In this study, the robustness of an online tool for objectively assessing singing ability was examined by: (1) determining the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the tool; (2) comparing the task performance of web-based participants (n = 285) with a group (n = 52) completing the tool in a controlled laboratory setting, and then determining the convergent validity between settings, and (3) comparing participants’ task performance with previous research using similar singing tasks and populations. Results indicated that the online singing tool exhibited high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .92), and moderate-to-high test-retest reliabilities (.65–.80) across an average 4.5-year-span. Task performance for web- and laboratory-based participants (n = 82) matched on age, sex, and music training were not significantly different. Moderate-to-large correlations (|r| =.31–.59) were found between self-rated singing ability and the various singing tasks, supporting convergent validity. Finally, task performance of the web-based sample was not significantly different to previously reported findings. Overall the findings support the robustness of the online tool for objectively measuring singing pitch accuracy beyond a controlled laboratory environment and its potential application in large-scale investigations of singing and music ability.

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of “music” and “culture.”

prior work indicates that listeners may be more likely to call a note in-tune when it is sung than when it is in another timbre. The current study seeks to confirm whether this vocal generosity effect generalizes to melodies. Musicians and nonmusicians listened to pairs of single tones and scale-based melodies performed with the voice or the violin. The final note was varied in how well it was tuned to the prior context, and for each example, listeners judged whether the final note was intune or not. A strong vocal generosity effect was found for musicians and nonmusicians in both melodic and single tone conditions – a higher degree of mistuning was necessary for listeners to decide that sung tones were out-of-tune compared with violin notes. These results confirm the role of timbre in tuning judgments, and help explain why singers are typically less well-tuned than instrumentalists in performance.

the goal of this study is to assess whether new lyrics are better learned and memorized when presented in a spoken or sung form. In normal young adults, mixed results have been reported, with studies showing a positive, a negative, or a null effect of singing on verbal recall. Several factors can account for this limited aid of music. First, the familiarity of the melody might play a role. Second, successive learning sessions and long-term retention intervals may be necessary. These two factors are considered here in a case study of a participant who suffers from mild Alzheimer's disease. As expected, initial learning of new lyrics showed better performance for the spoken condition over the sung version unless the lyrics are learned on a familiar melody. After repeated learning episodes, learning sung lyrics – even on an unfamiliar melody – led to better retention of words. Thus, music may provide a more robust aid for consolidation in memory than spoken lyrics alone. The therapeutic implications of these results are discussed.

IN THIS ARTICLE, WE FIRST REPORT the data of normal music readers on a new music-reading battery developed in our laboratory. The battery was inspired by the brain damage literature on music-reading deficits and comprised visual and auditory tasks. Second, we report the battery data of IG, a university musician who was referred to us as potentially dyslexic for music, and also her data on text reading and neuropsychological tests.We compare IG's data with those of normal readers.We suggest that IG might represent a case of associated music and text developmental dyslexia.Her results also indicate a dissociation between her pitch and rhythm reading abilities not quite the same as normal readers, as well as an interesting dissociation between reading and repetition, opposite to normal readers.

RECENTLY, WE POINTED OUT THAT A SMALL number of individuals fail to acquire basic musical abilities, and that these deficiencies might have neuronal and genetic underpinnings. Such a musical disorder is now termed "congenital amusia," an umbrella term for lifelong musical disabilities that cannot be attributed to mental retardation, deafness, or lack of exposure. Congenital amusia is a condition that is estimated to affect 4% of the general population. Despite this relatively high prevalence, cases of congenital amusia have been difficult to identify.We present here a novel on-line test that can be used to identify such cases in 15 minutes, provided that the cohort of the participant is taken into account. The results also confirm that congenital amusia is typically expressed by a deficit in perceiving musical pitch but not musical time.

Singing abilities are rarely examined despite the fact that their study represents one of the richest sources of information regarding how music is processed in the brain. In particular, the analysis of singing performance in brain-damaged patients provides key information regarding the autonomy of music processing relative to language processing. Here, we review the relevant literature, mostly on the perception and memory of text and tunes in songs, and we illustrate how lyrics can be distinguished from melody in singing, in the case of brain damage. We report a new case, G.D., who has a severe speech disorder,marked by phonemic errors and stuttering, without a concomitant musical production disorder. G.D. was found to produce as few intelligible words in speaking as in singing familiar songs. Singing “la, la, la” was intact and hence could not account for the speech deficit observed in singing. The results indicate that verbal production, be it sung or spoken, is mediated by the same (impaired) language output system and that this speech route is distinct from the (spared) melodic route. In sum, we provide here further evidence that the autonomy of music and language processing extends to production tasks.