Summary
Various stimulus types have been investigated in pitch discrimination and pitch matching
tasks. However, previous studies have not explored the use of recorded samples of
an individual's own voice in performing these two tasks. The purpose of this study
was to investigate pitch discrimination and pitch matching abilities using three stimuli
conditions (participant's own voice, a neutral female voice, and nonvocal complex
tones) to determine if pitch discrimination and/or pitch matching abilities are influenced
by the type of stimuli presented. Results of the pitch discrimination tasks yielded
no significant difference in discrimination ability for the three stimuli. For the
pitch matching tasks, a significant difference was found for the participants' voice
versus neutral female voice and the participants' voice versus tonal stimuli. There
was no significant difference in pitch matching ability between the neutral female
voice and the tonal stimuli. There was no significant correlation between pitch discrimination
and pitch matching abilities for any of the three stimuli types. These results suggest
that it is easier to match the pitch of one's own voice than to match the pitch of
a neutral female voice and nonvocal complex tones, although no difference was found
for pitch discrimination abilities. One possible implication of this study is that
differences in matching the pitch of one's own voice compared to matching other stimuli
types may help to differentiate the source of singing inaccuracy (motor vs discrimination
skills).
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 18, 2007
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
