Amateur singers' advantage in Mandarin tone perception and imitation.

Abstract

Musical advantage in speech perception has been widely studied for instrumentalists, but it remains unclear whether singers share this benefit. In speech production, although singers' superiority has been observed relative to non-musicians, little is known about how they achieve this advantage. To address these gaps, this study investigated (i) whether singers outperformed non-musicians in Mandarin tone perception and imitation, (ii) whether singers' potential advantage in imitation depended on auditory feedback, and (iii) whether both groups' imitation improved across repetitions. Singers and non-musicians completed a Mandarin tone AXB discrimination task to evaluate their Mandarin tone perception. As for tone production, they completed a Mandarin tone word imitation task under two conditions-with and without auditory feedback. Results showed that singers achieved higher accuracy in tone perception, extending the OPERA hypothesis from Patel [(2011). Front Psychol. 2, 142; (2014) Hear. Res. 308, 98-108] by demonstrating that vocal training can also enhance auditory sensitivity to speech sounds. The singers also surpassed non-musicians in tone imitation, an advantage independent of auditory feedback, possibly reflecting reliance on somatosensory feedback or feedforward control. No effect of repetition was observed. Additionally, the high-level and high-falling tones appeared to rely more heavily on auditory feedback during imitation.