Effect of musical training on pitch discrimination performance in older normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners

Authors

  • Federica Bianchi Hearing Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark
  • Torsten Dau Hearing Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark
  • Sébastien Santurette Hearing Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark; Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery & Audiology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

Hearing-impaired (HI) listeners, as well as elderly listeners, typically have a reduced ability to discriminate the fundamental frequency (F0) of complex tones compared to young normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Several studies have shown that musical training, on the other hand, leads to improved F0-discrimination performance for NH listeners. It is unclear whether a comparable effect of musical training occurs for listeners whose sensory encoding of F0 is degraded. To address this question, F0 discrimination was investigated for three groups of listeners (14 young NH, 9 older NH and 10 HI listeners), each including musicians and non-musicians, using complex tones that differed in harmonic content. Musical training significantly improved F0 discrimination for all groups of listeners, especially for complex tones containing low-numbered harmonics. In a second experiment, the sensitivity to temporal fine structure cues (TFS) was estimated in the same listeners. Although TFS cues were degraded for the two older groups of listeners, musicians showed better performance than non-musicians. Additionally, a significant correlation was obtained between F0-discrimination performance and sensitivity to TFS cues for complex tones with low and intermediate harmonic numbers. These findings suggest that musical training may enhance both sensory encoding of TFS cues and F0 discrimination in young and older listeners with or without hearing loss.

References

Bernstein, J.G.W., and Oxenham, A.J. (2003). “Pitch discrimination of diotic and dichotic tone complexes: Harmonic resolvability or harmonic number?,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 113, 3323-3334. doi: 10.1121/1.1572146

Bernstein, J.G.W., and Oxenham, A.J. (2006). “The relationship between frequency selectivity and pitch discrimination: Sensorineural hearing loss,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 120, 3929-3945. doi: 10.1121/1.2372452

Bianchi, F., Santurette, S.,Wendt, D., and Dau, T. (2016a). “Pitch Discrimination in Musicians and Non-Musicians: Effects of Harmonic Resolvability and Processing Effort,” J. Assoc. Res. Otolaryngol., 17, 69-79. doi: 10.1007/s10162-015-0548-2

Bianchi, F., Hjortkjær, J., Santurette, S., Zatorre, R.J., Siebner, H.R., and Dau, T. (2017). “Subcortical and cortical correlates of pitch discrimination: Evidence for two levels of neuroplasticity in musicians,” Neuroimage. doi 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.07.057

Hopkins, K., and Moore, B.C.J. (2007). “Moderate cochlear hearing loss leads to a reduced ability to use temporal fine structure information,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 122: 1055-1068. doi: 10.1121/1.2749457

Hopkins, K., and Moore, B.C.J. (2011). “The effects of age and cochlear hearing loss on temporal fine structure sensitivity, frequency selectivity, and speech reception in noise,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 130, 334-349. doi: 10.1121/1.3585848

Houtsma, A.J.M., and Smurzynski, J. (1990). “Pitch identification and discrimination for complex tones with many harmonics,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 87, 304-310. doi: 10.1121/1.399297

Micheyl, C., Delhommeau, K., Perrot, X., and Oxenham, A.J. (2006). “Influence of musical and psychoacoustical training on pitch discrimination,” Hear. Res., 219, 36-47. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2006.05.004

Moore, B.C.J., and Peters, R.W. (1992). “Pitch discrimination and phase sensitivity in young and elderly subjects and its relationship to frequency selectivity,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 91, 2881-2893.

Moore, B.C.J., and Moore, G.A. (2003). “Discrimination of the fundamental frequency of complex tones with fixed and shifting spectral envelopes by normally hearing and hearingimpaired subjects,” Hear. Res., 182, 153-163. doi: 10.1016/S0378-5955(03)00191-6

Oxenham, A.J., Micheyl, C., and Kleebler, M.V. (2009). “Can temporal fine structure represent the fundamental frequency of unresolved harmonics?” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 125, 2189-2199.

Parbery-Clark, A., Anderson, S., Hittner, E., and Kraus, N. (2012). “Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing,” Neurobiol. Aging, 33, 1483:e1-e4. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2011.12.015

Plomp, R. (1964). “The ear as a frequency analyzer,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 36, 1628-1636.

Spiegel, M.F., and Watson, C.S. (1984). “Performance on frequency discrimination tasks by musicians and non-musicians,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 76, 1690-1695.

Additional Files

Published

2017-12-11

How to Cite

Bianchi, F., Dau, T., & Santurette, S. (2017). Effect of musical training on pitch discrimination performance in older normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research, 6, 175–182. Retrieved from https://proceedings.isaar.eu/index.php/isaarproc/article/view/2017-21

Issue

Section

2017/4. Assessment of specific auditory functions and hearing ability