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Development of vocal exercises with visual art and interactive tools might contribute to development of students' musical skills and enhance learning effectiveness. This paper gets an insight into the effectiveness of the vocal exercises developed with visual art tools and a vocal training app. The survey was conducted among 110 students from a music school in China. Students from small groups B who used MOOC and the developed vocal exercises performed 8.6% better compared to the control group, suggesting the programme's effectiveness for teaching vocal performance. Group B post-assessment of the special factors showed increased scores on the three assessment criteria after the intervention. This study has practical value and is important for further research because it demonstrates the developed vocal exercises' effect on musical skills. Research findings may be applied in educational institutions that are interested in finding ways to develop musical skills and improve the effectiveness of vocal training. The results are important for teachers, education officials and everyone interested in the introduction of interactive environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Atypical speech prosody has been commonly found among autistic children. Yet it remains unknown whether prosody impairment originates from poor pitch ability in general or whether it is the result of the difficulty in understanding and using prosody for communicative purposes. Aims: To investigate whether native Mandarin Chinese‐speaking autistic children with intellectual impairment were able to accurately produce native lexical tones, which are pitch patterns that distinguish word meaning lexically and serve little social purpose. Methods & Procedures: Using a picture‐naming task, thirteen 8–13‐year‐old Mandarin Chinese‐speaking autistic children with intellectual impairment were tested on their production of Chinese lexical tones. Chronical age‐matched typically developing (TD) children were included as the control group. Perceptual assessment and phonetic analyses were conducted with the produced lexical tones. Outcomes & Results: The majority of the lexical tones produced by the autistic children were perceived as accurate by adult judges. Phonetic analysis of the pitch contours found no significant difference between the two groups, and the autistic children and TD children used the phonetic features in comparable ways when differentiating the lexical tones. However, the lexical tone accuracy rate was lower among the autistic children than among the TDs, and the larger individual difference was observed among the autistic children than the TD children. Conclusions & Implications: These results indicate that autistic children are able to produce the global contours of the lexical tones, and pitch deficits do not seem to qualify as a core feature of autism. What this paper adds: What is already known on the subject: Atypical prosody has been considered a maker of the speech of autistic children, and meta‐analysis found a significant difference in mean pitch and pitch range between TD children and autistic children. Yet it remains unknown whether the pitch deficits are the result of impaired perceptual–motoric ability or if they reflect failure in learning sentential prosody, which requires an understanding of the interlocutors' mind. In addition, research on pitch ability of autistic children with intellectual disabilities has been scarce, and whether these children are able to produce pitch variation is largely unknown. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: We tested native Mandarin Chinese autistic children with intellectual impairment on their production of native lexical tones. The lexical tones in Chinese are pitch variations realized on individual syllables that distinguish lexical meaning, but they do not serve social pragmatic purposes. We found that although these autistic children had only developed limited spoken language, the majority of their lexical tones were perceived as accurate. They were able to use the phonetic features in comparable ways with the TD children when distinguishing the lexical tones. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: It seems unlikely that pitch processing at the lexical level is fundamentally impaired in autistic children, and pitch deficits do not seem to qualify for a core feature of their speech. Practitioners should be cautious when using pitch production as a clinical marker for autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic– phonemic normalization) were investigated through the lexical tone identification task in nonspeech contexts and speech contexts, respectively. Besides, another aim of this study was to reveal how domain-general cognitive abilities contribute to the development of the speech normalization process. Method: In this study, 94 five- to eight-year-old Mandarin-speaking children (50 boys, 44 girls) and 24 young adults (14 men, 10 women) were asked to identify ambiguous Mandarin high-level and mid-rising tones in either speech or non-speech contexts. Furthermore, in this study, we tested participants’ pitch sensitivity through a nonlinguistic pitch discrimination task and their working memory using the digit span task. Results: Higher level acoustic–phonemic normalization of lexical tones emerged at the age of 6 years and was relatively stable thereafter. However, lower level acoustic normalization was less stable across different ages. Neither pitch sen)sitivity nor working memory affected children’s lexical tone normalization. Conclusions: Mandarin-speaking children above 6 years of age successfully achieved constancy in lexical tone normalization based on speech contextual cues. The perceptual normalization of lexical tones was not affected by pitch sensitivity and working memory capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on his academic background in multicultural music education and ethnomusicology, Huib Schippers developed the Seven-Continuum Transmission Model (SCTM) in 2004 to describe the teaching situations of world music. The current study adopted the SCTM as a framework to investigate Chinese music teachers' perceptions of context issues (tradition, authenticity, and context) and transmission modes (analytic/holistic, notation based/aural, and tangible/intangible) in world music teaching. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted using a qualitative methodology with nine primary and secondary school music teachers from different provinces in China. This study found that Chinese music teachers' perceptions of context issues and transmission modes in world music teaching were more inclined to the formal, institutional settings rather than the informal, often community-based process. In addition, the music teachers were also influenced more by the "Eurocentrism" values; however, their perceptions were less affected by ethnomusicology that interprets human music from a cultural perspective and by multicultural music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Previous research has indicated the beneficial effects of musical training on speech perception in children. However, little has been known about whether musical training exerts transfer effects on fine-grained perception of linguistic pitch and time information. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different musical training programs and training duration on preschoolers’ categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method: Sixty-one Mandarin-speaking children aged 4 years were randomly assigned to pitch-based musical training (carillon group), rhythm-based musical training (drum group), or handcraft learning (control group). Children completed the tests designed to assess their musical abilities, CP of lexical tones and VOT, IQ, and working memory at three time-points. Repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted to evaluate the training-related effects in various tasks. Correlation analyses were used to infer the relationships between musical abilities and CP performance of speech. Results: The carillon group demonstrated advantages over the drum and control groups in music pitch processing and CP of lexical tones; besides, the drum group performed better in the music time processing and CP of VOT than the control group. Moreover, positive correlations were found between musical gains and improvements on CP of speech. Conclusions: These results provide evidence that transfer effects occur in CP of lexical tones and VOT in preschoolers. Our findings highlight the selectivity of musical advantages driven by different components of training programs and suggest that long-term musical training could be a means of early speech rehabilitation in children with communication disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the effects of acoustic perception on outdoor thermal comfort, acoustic perception in five typical open spaces in a campus in China's cold region with common soundscapes was evaluated by using meteorological measures, sound level devices, and a questionnaire survey. Eight adjectives were used to evaluate an individual's acoustic perception, and the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) was selected as a thermal index. The correlations between acoustic perception and thermal comfort in these typical open spaces were further analyzed. We demonstrated that: (1) Acoustic sensation and comfort varied significantly among sound types (STPs). Respondents reported pleasant perceptions of broadcasting music, running water and birdsong, and wind (a gentle breeze) and insects. (2) Although there was no significant difference in the thermal sensation vote (TSV), we found large differences in the thermal comfort vote (TCV) among STPs. (3) The respondents' neutral PET (NPET) varied among STPs. In autumn, the ranked order of NPET was machines > running water and birdsong > crowds > broadcasting music > wind (a gentle breeze) and insects. In winter, the order of the NPET was machines > wind (a gentle breeze) and insects > crowds > broadcasting music > running water and birdsong. (4) When people perceived "acoustic comfort", their TSV improved, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores augmented reality (AR) possibilities for the preservation of national cultural art, popularization of Chinese musical instruments among the youth, and meeting the tourist interest in the cultural heritage of China in a fascinating interactive form. Using the generated database containing information on traditional musical instruments of the Guizhou province, the authors have developed an AR application adapted for educational and tourist purposes. Its central aim was to acquaint people with traditional Chinese musical instruments in the context of familiarization with the national culture of China. Testing of the developed application was carried out by hundred students from Guizhou Minzu University (College of Tourism and Steward, the College of Media, the College of Music and Dance, and the College of Data Science and Information Engineering) as part of the National Culture and Art study course. As a result, the created AR app was proved to expand the understanding of the culture and traditions of the Chinese people, intensify the perception of national musical identity, increase interactivity-caused inspiration and involvement (89%), and enhance interest in new knowledge (93%). Based on the obtained research outcomes, a model for the popularization of traditional Chinese musical instruments in the structure of the integrated national tourism product of Guizhou province was developed. The article is believed to be useful for individuals studying the national cultural heritage of China and educators seeking innovative solutions that improve the educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article is to explore the main aspects of musical culture development in China in the midtwentieth century in the context of political reforms. The methodology is based on the usage of culturological approach, which determines the generalized socio-cultural orientation of the work, as well as the principle of historicism as the main when considering Chinese musical culture in relation to political processes that took place during this period. The main research methods were: historical and cultural - to study the process of forming the cultural policy of the CCP; comparative - in determining the political influence in different periods of musical culture; content analysis - to reveal the ideological essence of CCP documents. The scientific novelty of the article is the analysis of political documents that determine the direction and mechanisms of implementation of the CCP's cultural policy and their impact on the development of Chinese musical culture in the mid-twentieth century. Conclusions. The process of the formation of the CCP's cultural policy and the main directions of musical art development in the middle of the twentieth century is determined by the call for the creation of a «mass new culture» combined with reliance on millennial national traditions. The "reformist" movement of the Jiang Qing Group, aimed to transform traditional Beijing opera and create model revolutionary works, significantly limited the creative freedom of artists and was the main cause of «artificial stagnation» in the musical culture of the 60-the 70s of the twentieth century. The suspension of cultural and ideological experiments and overcoming its negative consequences, together with effective economic reforms, paved the way for the formation of a new progressive direction in the development of musical art in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music education is an important means of quality education and plays an irreplaceable role in inducing all-round development of students. China's rural areas are weak areas for popularization of education. Music is a scarce subject in rural schools, but it is not a dispensable subject. Rural students should receive strict and formal education. Music education is important for cultivating students'physical and mental health and healthy thinking. The influences and feelings produced by, aesthetic taste, etc. cannot be replaced by other disciplines of education. Currently, music education in rural primary and secondary schools in Shaanxi province, China is restricted by various factors while still being far from achieving requirements of modern education. This research aims to study, investigate and analyse the current situation of music education in rural areas, highlight the problems in music education in rural area as well as proposing related solutions to promote the development of music education in rural Shaanxi province in China. To solve the problems of music education in rural primary and secondary schools in Shaanxi, it is necessary to increase the importance of leadership to music education in rural primary and secondary schools in Shaanxi, increase investment in music education in rural primary and secondary schools in Shaanxi, and innovate the training and supply mechanism of music teachers in rural primary and secondary schools in Shaanxi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing the F0-contour of English words does not change their lexical meaning. However, it changes the meaning in tonal languages such as Mandarin. Given this important difference and knowing that words in the two languages of a bilingual lexicon interact, the question arises as to how Mandarin-English speakers process pitch in their bilingual lexicon. The few studies that addressed this question showed that Mandarin-English speakers did not perceive pitch in English words as native English speakers did. These studies, however, used English words as stimuli failing to examine nonwords and Mandarin words. Consequently, possible pre-lexical effects and L1 transfer were not ruled out. The present study fills this gap by examining pitch perception in Mandarin and English words and nonwords by Mandarin-English speakers and a group of native English controls. Results showed the tonal experience of Chinese-English speakers modulated their perception of pitch in their non-tonal language at both pre-lexical and lexical levels. In comparison to native English controls, tonal speakers were more sensitive to the acoustic salience of F0-contours in the pre-lexical processing due to top-down feedback. At the lexical level, Mandarin-English speakers organized words in their two languages according to similarity criteria based on both F0 and segmental information, whereas only the segmental information was relevant to the control group. These results in perception together with consistently reported production patterns in previous literature suggest that Mandarin-English speakers process pitch in English as if it was a one-tone language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the recognition of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking bimodal cochlear implant (CI) subjects. Design: Lexical tone recognition in quiet and noise (SNR= +5 dB) was measured with electric stimulation (CI alone) or bimodal stimulation (CI + hearing aid (HA)). The recognition and confusion rates of the four tones (T1, T2, T3 and T4) were analysed. Spearman correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationship between hearing levels in the contralateral ear and bimodal benefits. Study sample: Twenty native Mandarin-speaking bimodal CI users, with ages ranging from 16–49 years. Results: Relative to the CI alone, mean tone recognition with the CI + HA improved significantly from 84.1–92.1% correct in quiet (+8 points) and from 57.9–73.1% correct in noise (+15.2 points). Tone confusions between T2 and T3 were the most prominent in all test conditions, and T4 tended to be labelled as T3 in noise. There was no significant correlation between the bimodal benefits for tone recognition and the unaided or HA-aided pure-tone thresholds at 0.25 kHz. Conclusion: Listeners with CI + HA exhibited significantly better tone recognition than with CI alone. The bimodal advantage for tone recognition was greater in noise than in quiet, perhaps due to a ceiling effect in quiet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent music tourism researches are notable owing to growing socioeconomic significance of music. But the question about how music affects tourists' behaviors in travel practice remains there. This study explores the effects of music on tourists' behaviors by deploying a survey of tourists in Lijiang old town which is famous for abundant musical cultures. Results show that tourists' behavioral intentions are influenced by music-induced emotions which are stimulated by music perception and music cognition. This paper provides a new insight into music characteristics in tourism and new ways for how tourism destinations engage with music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical training is an enrichment activity involving multiple senses, including auditory, visual, somatosensorial, attention, memory, and executive function (EF), all of which are related to cognition. This study examined whether musical training enhances EF in preschool children who had not undergone previous systematic music learning. This study also explored the after-effects 12 weeks after cessation of musical training. Participants were 61 preschool children from a university-affiliated kindergarten in North China. The experimental group underwent 12 weeks of integrated musical training (i.e., music theory, singing, dancing, and role-playing), while the control group performed typical daily classroom activities. The three components (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility) of executive functions were evaluated using the Day/Night Stroop, Dimensional Change Card Sort, Dot Matrix Test, and Backward Digit Span Task. In Experiment 1, EFs were tested twice-before (T1) and after (T2) the music training. The results showed that children's EFs could be promoted by musical training. In addition, EFs were tested again 12 weeks later after the end of the intervention (T3) in Experiment 2. We discovered that integrated musical training demonstrated a sustained promotion effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional understanding plays an important role in the physical and mental health of children. To determine whether the development of emotional understanding is delayed in children with a cochlear implant (CI), 30 children with a CI and 30 matched children with typical hearing aged between 3 and 9 years old completed three tasks (facial expression, tone expression and scene of emotion matching), in which they identified four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, and fear). The participants included 40 preschool children and 20 school-aged children. Compared with the children with typical hearing, the children with a CI were significantly delayed in the ability to understand emotion; the tone expression matching task was the most difficult task for all participants; and the school-aged children performed better than the preschool children, but this trend was only observed in the typical hearing group; and happiness was the easiest emotion to identify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the perceptual trade-off between knowledge of a language’s statistical regularities and reliance on the acoustic signal during L2 spoken word recognition. We test how early learners track and make use of segmental and suprasegmental cues and their relative frequencies during non-native word recognition. English learners of Mandarin were taught an artificial tonal language in which a tone’s informativeness for word identification varied according to neighborhood density. The stimuli mimicked Mandarin’s uneven distribution of syllable+tone combinations by varying syllable frequency and the probability of particular tones co-occurring with a particular syllable. Use of statistical regularities was measured by four-alternative forced-choice judgments and by eye fixations to target and competitor symbols. Half of the participants were trained on one speaker, that is, low speaker variability while the other half were trained on four speakers. After four days of learning, the results confirmed that tones are processed according to their informativeness. Eye movements to the newly learned symbols demonstrated that L2 learners use tonal probabilities at an early stage of word recognition, regardless of speaker variability. The amount of variability in the signal, however, influenced the time course of recovery from incorrect anticipatory looks: participants exposed to low speaker variability recovered from incorrect probability-based predictions of tone more rapidly than participants exposed to greater variability. These results motivate two conclusions: early L2 learners track the distribution of segmental and suprasegmental co-occurrences and make predictions accordingly during spoken word recognition; and when the acoustic input is more variable because of multi-speaker input, listeners rely more on their knowledge of tone-syllable co-occurrence frequency distributions and less on the incoming acoustic signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones was examined in normal hearing (NH) people, but it was unclear whether lexical tones can be perceived categorically in sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) people. Objectives: To explore the characteristic of lexical tone perception in native Mandarin speakers with SNHL. Materials and methods: Three types of continuum (Tone1/Tone2, Tone1/Tone4 and Tone2/Tone3) were constructed and each of them includes 15 stimuli which were resynthesized by applying the pitch-synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) method implemented in Praat to the same Mandarin syllable, /a/, with a high-level tone produced by a female speaker. Forty native Mandarin NH speakers and 23 native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL were recruited. A two alternativeforced- choice identification task was used to acquire the tonal perceptual data. Results: All tone perception curves owns the characteristic of CP in SNHL subjects. All tone perception curves were S-shape in SNHL subjects same as those in NH subjects. No significant difference of each continuum was observed between SNHL and NH. Conclusions: CP of lexical tone perception could be observed in native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL. The slight damage in the peripheral auditory system did not change characteristic of lexical tone perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones was examined in normal hearing (NH) people, but it was unclear whether lexical tones can be perceived categorically in sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) people. Objectives: To explore the characteristic of lexical tone perception in native Mandarin speakers with SNHL. Materials and methods: Three types of continuum (Tone1/Tone2, Tone1/Tone4 and Tone2/Tone3) were constructed and each of them includes 15 stimuli which were resynthesized by applying the pitch-synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) method implemented in Praat to the same Mandarin syllable, /a/, with a high-level tone produced by a female speaker. Forty native Mandarin NH speakers and 23 native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL were recruited. A two alternative- forced-choice identification task was used to acquire the tonal perceptual data. Results: All tone perception curves owns the characteristic of CP in SNHL subjects. All tone perception curves were S-shape in SNHL subjects same as those in NH subjects. No significant difference of each continuum was observed between SNHL and NH. Conclusions: CP of lexical tone perception could be observed in native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL. The slight damage in the peripheral auditory system did not change characteristic of lexical tone perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Because of limited spectral resolution, Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulty perceiving fundamental frequency (F0) cues that are important to lexical tone recognition. To improve Mandarin tone recognition in CI users, we implemented and evaluated a novel real-time algorithm (C-tone) to enhance the amplitude contour, which is strongly correlated with the F0 contour.Methods: The C-tone algorithm was implemented in clinical processors and evaluated in eight users of the Nurotron NSP-60 CI system. Subjects were given 2 weeks of experience with C-tone. Recognition of Chinese tones, monosyllables, and disyllables in quiet was measured with and without the C-tone algorithm. Subjective quality ratings were also obtained for C-tone.Results: After 2 weeks of experience with C-tone, there were small but significant improvements in recognition of lexical tones, monosyllables, and disyllables (P < 0.05 in all cases). Among lexical tones, the largest improvements were observed for Tone 3 (falling-rising) and the smallest for Tone 4 (falling). Improvements with C-tone were greater for disyllables than for monosyllables. Subjective quality ratings showed no strong preference for or against C-tone, except for perception of own voice, where C-tone was preferred.Discussion: The real-time C-tone algorithm provided small but significant improvements for speech performance in quiet with no change in sound quality. Pre-processing algorithms to reduce noise and better real-time F0 extraction would improve the benefits of C-tone in complex listening environments.Conclusions: Chinese CI users' speech recognition in quiet can be significantly improved by modifying the amplitude contour to better resemble the F0 contour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Models of speech production often abstract away from shared physiology in pitch control and lingual articulation, positing independent control of tone and vowel units. We assess the validity of this assumption in Mandarin Chinese by evaluating the stability of lingual articulation for vowels across variation in tone. Method: Electromagnetic articulography was used to track flesh points on the tongue (tip, body, dorsum), lips, and jaw while native Mandarin speakers (n = 6) produced 3 vowels, /pa/, /pi/, /pu/, combined with 4 Mandarin tones: T1 “high,” T2 “rising,” T3 “low,” and T4 “falling.” Results: Consistent with physiological expectations, tones that begin low, T2 and T3, conditioned a lower position of the tongue body for the vowel /a/. For the vowel /i/, we found the opposite effect, whereby tones that begin low, T2 and T3, conditioned a higher tongue body position. Conclusions: The physiology of pitch control exerts systematic variation on the lingual articulation of /a/ across tones. The effects of tone on /i/ articulation are in the opposite direction predicted by physiological considerations. Physiologically arbitrary variation of the type observed for /i/ challenges the assumption that phonetic patterns can be determined by independent control of tone (source) and vowel (filter) production units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated whether intonation deficits were observed in 19 Cantonese-speaking adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) when compared to 19 matched neurotypical (NT) controls. This study also investigated the use of sentence-final particles (SFPs) and their relationship with intonation in both groups. Standard deviations ( SDs) of the fundamental frequency (F0), the total number and the type of SFPs were calculated based on narrative samples. The HFA group demonstrated significantly higher SD of F0 and a positive correlation between the type of SFPs and SD of F0. Both groups produced a similar total number and type of SFPs. The results supported the universality of atypical intonation in ASD. The relationship between intonation and SFPs could be further explored by focusing on sentences containing SFPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated pitch processing in Mandarin-speaking children with autism using event-related potential measures. Two experiments were designed to test how acoustic, phonetic and semantic properties of the stimuli contributed to the neural responses for pitch change detection and involuntary attentional orienting. In comparison with age-matched (6-12 years) typically developing controls (16 participants in Experiment 1, 18 in Experiment 2), children with autism (18 participants in Experiment 1, 16 in Experiment 2) showed enhanced neural discriminatory sensitivity in the nonspeech conditions but not for speech stimuli. The results indicate domain specificity of enhanced pitch processing in autism, which may interfere with lexical tone acquisition and language development for children who speak a tonal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tone language experience benefits pitch processing in music and speech for typically developing individuals. No known studies have examined pitch processing in individuals with autism who speak a tone language. This study investigated discrimination and identification of melodic contour and speech intonation in a group of Mandarin-speaking individuals with high-functioning autism. Individuals with autism showed superior melodic contour identification but comparable contour discrimination relative to controls. In contrast, these individuals performed worse than controls on both discrimination and identification of speech intonation. These findings provide the first evidence for differential pitch processing in music and speech in tone language speakers with autism, suggesting that tone language experience may not compensate for speech intonation perception deficits in individuals with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a large-scale direct-test study of absolute pitch (AP) in students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Overall note-naming scores were very high, with high scores correlating positively with early onset of musical training. Students who had begun training at age ≤5 yr scored 83% correct not allowing for semitone errors and 90% correct allowing for semitone errors. Performance levels were higher for white key pitches than for black key pitches. This effect was greater for orchestral performers than for pianists, indicating that it cannot be attributed to early training on the piano. Rather, accuracy in identifying notes of different names (C, C#, D, etc.) correlated with their frequency of occurrence in a large sample of music taken from the Western tonal repertoire. There was also an effect of pitch range, so that performance on tones in the two-octave range beginning on Middle C was higher than on tones in the octave below Middle C. In addition, semitone errors tended to be on the sharp side. The evidence also ran counter to the hypothesis, previously advanced by others, that the note A plays a special role in pitch identification judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, observations of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response (FFR) to voice pitch have depended on subjective interpretation of the experimenter. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an automated procedure for detecting the presence of a response. Twenty American (9 boys, 1-3 days) and 20 Chinese (10 boys, 1-3 days) neonates were recruited. A Chinese monosyllable that mimicked the English vowel /i/ with a rising pitch (117-166 Hz) was used as the stimulus. Three objective indices (Frequency Error, Tracking Accuracy, and Pitch Strength) were computed from the recorded brain waves and the test results were compared with human judgments to calculate the sensitivity and specificity values. Results demonstrated that the automated procedure produced sensitivity values between 53-90% and specificity values between 80-100%, and could be used to assess the presence of an FFR for neonates who were born in a tonal or non-tonal language environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel , , ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Previous studies of English-speaking esophageal (SE) and tracheoesophageal (TE) speakers revealed a significantly lower voice fundamental frequency (F0) than normal laryngeal (NL) speakers. Studies of SE and TE speakers of a tone language, however, indicated discrepant findings. Tonal SE and TE speakers could produce comparable or even higher F0 than NL speakers. The present study examined the F0 characteristics associated with speech and nonspeech tasks produced by Cantonese SE and TE speakers. Subjects and Methods: Speech produced by 15 superior SE, 15 superior TE and 15 NL speakers was recorded while each was reading a short passage and performing a pitch scaling task. F0 values were calculated from the speech samples. Results: SE speakers had higher average F0 in reading tasks than TE and NL speakers, while the NL speakers exhibited the highest average F0 values followed by SE and TE speakers during pitch scaling. In addition, pitch scaling (nonspeech) tasks were associated with higher average F0 than passage reading tasks regardless of speaker type. Conclusion: The findings point to the fact that, despite the use of the new sound source, SE and TE speakers were still able to change F0 for specific speech tasks. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of acoustic characteristics, including timbre and fundamental frequency (Fo), on the musical pitch discrimination of cochlear implant users. Methods: Eight postlingually deafened cochlear implant users were recruited, along with 8 control subjects with normal hearing. Pitch discrimination tests were carried out using test stimuli from 4 musical instruments plus synthetic complex stimuli. Three reference tones with different Fos were used. Results: The mean difference limens were 1.8 to 10.7 semitones in the just-noticeable difference task and 2.1 to 13.6 semitones in the pitch-direction discrimination task for different timbre and Fo combinations. Three-way analysis of variance showed that the acoustic characteristics ofthe musical stimuli, such as timbre and Fo, significantly influenced pitch discrimination performance. Conclusions: Acoustic characteristics determine the complexity of the electrical stimulation pattern, which directly affects performance in pitch discrimination. A place pattern with a clear and regular low-order harmonic structure is most important for good pitch discrimination. A clear Fo-related temporal pattern is also useful when the Fo is low. Pitch perception performance will worsen when there is interference in the high-frequency channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigates the impact of intertalker variations on the process of mapping acoustic variations on tone categories in two different tone languages. Method: Pitch stimuli manipulated from four voice ranges were presented in isolation through a blocked-talker design. Listeners were instructed to identify the stimuli that they heard as lexical tones in their native language. Results: Tone identification of Mandarin listeners exhibited relatively stable normalization regardless of the voice, whereas tone identification of Cantonese listeners was unstable and susceptible to the influence of intertalker variations. In the case of Cantonese listeners, intertalker variations had a larger effect on the perception of F[sub 0] height dimension than of F[sub 0] slope dimension. Conclusion: The comparison between Cantonese and Mandarin listeners' performances reveals an interaction of intertalker variations and the types of tone contrasts in each language. For Cantonese tones, which depend heavily on F[sub 0] height distinctions, intertalker variations result in F[sub 0] overlapping and, consequently, ambiguities among them in isolated tone perception. For Mandarin tones, which are distinctive in terms of their F[sub 0] contours, the differences in F[sub 0] contours alone seem sufficient to elicit reliable tone identification. Intertalker variations therefore have relatively limited effect on Mandarin tone perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the fundamental frequency ( ƒ0) is removed from a complex stimulus, the pitch of the ƒ0 is still perceived by the listener. Through the use of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, this study examined the relative contributions of the ƒ0 and its harmonics in pitch processing by systematically manipulating the speech stimulus to remove component frequencies. 12 American and 12 Chinese adults were recruited. There were statistically significant effects of pitch strength and frequency error for the experimental-condition factor. There were significantly larger responses to the harmonics-only conditions than those obtained in the ƒ0-only and control conditions. No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups of participants. These findings indicate that neural responses associated with individual harmonics dominate the pitch processing in the human brainstem, irrespective of whether the listener's native language is nontonal or tonal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Older adults prefer slow-rhythmed instrumental music and natural sounds. • Older adults are more willing to participate in activities in an appropriate music environment. • A natural sound environment without interference from lyrics increases the crowd density in activity spaces. • Satisfaction decreases when the crowd density increases. The role of soundscape quality is being increasingly recognised in human well-being. This is also true for older adults, an increasingly growing group. In this study, we investigated the influence of different sound environments on the emotions and behaviour of older adults, as well as the correlation between crowd density and sound environment. This study was conducted in large and comprehensive activity spaces in a residential aged care facility in China. The participants included older adults who utilize or reside at the centre; they were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The experimental and control groups were provided a 'with music' or 'no music' environment, respectively. By setting the music type in the experimental group, we found that positive emotional experience and satisfaction were higher with slow-rhythmed music than that with fast-rhythmed music (p < 0.001). Crowd density was also significantly higher when slow-rhythmed music was played compared to that during fast-rhythmed music. Under the setting of natural sounds, the pleasure associated with individual activities was significantly higher than that of group activities. With an increase in crowd density, correlation with natural sounds was also increased. Overall, these research results provide a theoretical basis for the accurate control of audio variables in residential aged care facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]