Impaired talker recognition in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

Jing Shao, Lan Wang, Caicai Zhang

    Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingConference proceedingpeer-review

    Abstract

    The speech signal contains at least two types of information: the linguistic information and a talker’s voice. In this study we examined how congenital amusia, a pitch-processing disorder, affects the recognition of talkers’ voices. Twenty Mandarin-speaking amusics and 20 controls were tested on talker recognition in four types of contexts that varied in language familiarity: Mandarin real words, Mandarin pseudowords, Arabic words and reversed Mandarin speech. We found that the deficit in amusia affects talker recognition in that amusics demonstrated degraded performance in both native language conditions that contain phonological cues to facilitate talker recognition and non-native conditions where talker recognition primarily relies on phonetics cues including pitch. Altogether, the results suggested that the scope of amusia is beyond the pitch-related processing in linguistic dimension, but also extends to the talker dimension in speech signal.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
    EditorsSasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain , Paul Warren
    Place of PublicationCanberra, Australia
    PublisherAustralasian Speech Science and Technology Association
    Pages1808-1812
    Number of pages5
    ISBN (Print)9780646800691
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2019
    EventThe 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences - Melbourne, Australia
    Duration: 5 Aug 20199 Aug 2019
    https://assta.org/proceedings/ICPhS2019/

    Conference

    ConferenceThe 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
    Abbreviated titleICPhS2019
    Country/TerritoryAustralia
    CityMelbourne
    Period5/08/199/08/19
    Internet address

    User-Defined Keywords

    • congenital amusia
    • talker processing
    • pitch
    • language familiarity
    • Mandarin Chinese

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Impaired talker recognition in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this