Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing

The current study explores the effects of wind musicians vs. percussionists on linguistic tone processing. English-Chinese Singaporean bilingual undergraduates aged between 22 and 25 who are all musicians playing either a wind musician or a percussive instrument completed a series of Cantonese tone...

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Main Author: Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En
Other Authors: Chan Hiu Dan Alice
Format: Final Year Project (FYP)
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66051
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author Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En
author2 Chan Hiu Dan Alice
author_facet Chan Hiu Dan Alice
Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En
author_sort Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En
collection NTU
description The current study explores the effects of wind musicians vs. percussionists on linguistic tone processing. English-Chinese Singaporean bilingual undergraduates aged between 22 and 25 who are all musicians playing either a wind musician or a percussive instrument completed a series of Cantonese tone perception and production tasks. Besson et al. (2007) found that musically trained individuals were better at pitch discrimination tasks in both music and speech tasks, especially in conditions where the two contrasting pitches being tested showed only slight acoustic dissimilarity rather than very overt differences. Other studies are mainly focused on comparing differences between musicians and non-musicians. This study investigates the within-musician effects on linguistic pitch processing because learning different types of instruments requires varying types of cognitive and motor development. However, no significant differences were found between the two musician groups in the Cantonese perception task. Furthermore, percussionists outperformed wind musicians despite the prediction that wind musicians were more likely to be more sensitive towards pitch owing to the differing nature of their instruments. This suggests musician type may not be a robust factor in predicting performance on linguistic pitch discrimination. This study points out improvements that can be made to further test this finding on a wider scale.
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spelling ntu-10356/660512019-12-10T12:22:46Z Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En Chan Hiu Dan Alice School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Humanities The current study explores the effects of wind musicians vs. percussionists on linguistic tone processing. English-Chinese Singaporean bilingual undergraduates aged between 22 and 25 who are all musicians playing either a wind musician or a percussive instrument completed a series of Cantonese tone perception and production tasks. Besson et al. (2007) found that musically trained individuals were better at pitch discrimination tasks in both music and speech tasks, especially in conditions where the two contrasting pitches being tested showed only slight acoustic dissimilarity rather than very overt differences. Other studies are mainly focused on comparing differences between musicians and non-musicians. This study investigates the within-musician effects on linguistic pitch processing because learning different types of instruments requires varying types of cognitive and motor development. However, no significant differences were found between the two musician groups in the Cantonese perception task. Furthermore, percussionists outperformed wind musicians despite the prediction that wind musicians were more likely to be more sensitive towards pitch owing to the differing nature of their instruments. This suggests musician type may not be a robust factor in predicting performance on linguistic pitch discrimination. This study points out improvements that can be made to further test this finding on a wider scale. Bachelor of Arts 2016-03-08T02:35:50Z 2016-03-08T02:35:50Z 2016 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66051 en Nanyang Technological University 51 p. application/pdf
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities
Bong, Jacqueline Michelle Mei-En
Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title_full Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title_fullStr Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title_full_unstemmed Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title_short Pitch perfect : a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
title_sort pitch perfect a study on the influence of musician type on linguistic pitch processing
topic DRNTU::Humanities
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66051
work_keys_str_mv AT bongjacquelinemichellemeien pitchperfectastudyontheinfluenceofmusiciantypeonlinguisticpitchprocessing