Luo Xin, Masterson Megan E, Wu Ching-Chih
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2014 Oct;136(4):1831-44. doi: 10.1121/1.4894738.
The perception of melodic intervals (sequential pitch differences) is essential to music perception. This study tested melodic interval perception in normal-hearing (NH) listeners and cochlear implant (CI) users. Melodic interval ranking was tested using an adaptive procedure. CI users had slightly higher interval ranking thresholds than NH listeners. Both groups' interval ranking thresholds, although not affected by root note, significantly increased with standard interval size and were higher for descending intervals than for ascending intervals. The pitch direction effect may be due to a procedural artifact or a difference in central processing. In another test, familiar melodies were played with all the intervals scaled by a single factor. Subjects rated how in tune the melodies were and adjusted the scaling factor until the melodies sounded the most in tune. CI users had lower final interval ratings and less change in interval rating as a function of scaling factor than NH listeners. For CI users, the root-mean-square error of the final scaling factors and the width of the interval rating function were significantly correlated with the average ranking threshold for ascending rather than descending intervals, suggesting that CI users may have focused on ascending intervals when rating and adjusting the melodies.
旋律音程（连续音高差异）的感知对于音乐感知至关重要。本研究测试了正常听力（NH）听众和人工耳蜗（CI）使用者的旋律音程感知。使用自适应程序测试旋律音程排序。CI使用者的音程排序阈值略高于NH听众。两组的音程排序阈值虽然不受根音影响，但随标准音程大小显著增加，且下行音程的阈值高于上行音程。音高方向效应可能是由于程序伪迹或中枢处理差异所致。在另一项测试中，播放熟悉的旋律，所有音程按单一因子缩放。受试者对旋律的音准程度进行评分，并调整缩放因子，直到旋律听起来最准。与NH听众相比，CI使用者的最终音程评分较低，且音程评分随缩放因子的变化较小。对于CI使用者，最终缩放因子的均方根误差和音程评分函数的宽度与上行而非下行音程的平均排序阈值显著相关，这表明CI使用者在对旋律进行评分和调整时可能更关注上行音程。
