"assessing the capacities of the self-defined tone-deaf : deconstructing a myth"

"Assessing the capacities of the self-defined tone-deaf:

Deconstructing a myth" John Sloboda and Karen Wise (Centre for Psychology Research:Research Institute of Life Course Studies)

[email protected]@psy.keele.ac.uk

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Acknowledgments

Funding from

the British Academy

The Leverhulme Trust

The Nuffield Foundation

Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research

Context

Long-term Keele-based work on understanding individual differences in musical skill

Motivation:

- Scientific explanation of musical variation

- Seeking underlying commonalities

- Rescuing extremes from the status of “freaks”

Work at Keele

Phenomena studied

- Musical savants (low IQ individuals with high musical skills) With Neil O’Connor and Beate Hermelin (1980s)

- Exceptionally skilled young musicians (the musically “gifted”) With Michael Howe, Jane Davidson, and Derek Moore (1990s)

- People who have, or believe themselves to have, musical deficits (the “tone deaf” or “amusics”) With Isabelle Peretz and Karen Wise, and support from Lauren Stewart (Goldsmiths University) - ongoing

Influences on skill acquisition

Determinants of high ability include cognitive, social, and motivational variables

Key examples COGNITIVE Practice – strong relationship between

amount of relevant cognitive effort and achievement SOCIAL Adult support behaviour – strong

relationship between nature and amount of parental support and achievement

PRACTICE

Grade

Mean number of hours of practice0200400600800

1000120014001600180020002200240026002800300032003400

P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Cumulated hoursfrom previousgradeTotal cumulatedhours

Motivational variables

MOTIVATIONAL Mastery-orientation, belief in self as “talented” – strong relationship between self-beliefs and persistence on difficult tasks

BUT Lay beliefs about causes of high achievement include the

postulation of rare “innate talent”, the lack of which is held to explain low achievement.

Large numbers in western society consider themselves “unmusical”, have objectively low achievement, and have “given up” on aspirations to musical skill acquisition

Developmental considerations

Yet perceptual and cognitive studies of babies suggest sophisticated inborn mechanisms for processing musical sounds, with few individual differences.

Therefore, a parsimonious assumption is that lack of achievement is not generally due to a lack of cognitive capacity.

Are there people who really do lack essential cognitive capacities? The “tone deaf”?

If so, is it possible to screen for “tone deafness”, thereby proving to the “not tone deaf” that they have the requisite capacity, and could this proof re-motivate them to engage in musical skill acquisition activities?

Current research programme

Develop a comprehensive assessment battery capable of differentiating among different types of musical “under-performance”

Through this battery begin to more precisely map out (and offer functional accounts of) different patterns of deficit in the general population

Most specifically, use the battery to investigate differences between identified “congenital amusics” (Peretz et al), self-defined “tone-deaf” adults, and adult controls.

“Congenital amusia” (Ayotte, Peretz & Hyde, 2002)

Peretz et al – Montreal sample Allegedly emerges in early life and persists in adulthood Normal perception and cognition otherwise Dense Impairments in melodic discrimination and recognition,

musical memory, metric discrimination, singing, and tapping with the beat

May affect 4% of population (Kalmus & Fry, 1980) Montreal Battery for the Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) reliably

distinguishes amusics from others. Amusics perform at chance, normals perform well.

This is a purely perceptual test, requires no musical performance

Are tone deafness and amusia the same things?

17% of university undergraduates self-define as tone deaf, but most score in the normal range on the MBEA (Cuddy, 2005)

So: – Either they do not have difficulties but believe they

do– Or they have difficulties not detected by the MBEA– Understanding and assisting this large sub-

population requires differentiating between these possibilities

Concepts of ‘tone deafness’

No scientific definition. Lay term.

Interviews have revealed: Tone deafness is generally associated with a (perceived)

inability to sing Tone deafness is not just an extreme form of unmusicality: a

person can be both musical and tone-deaf Comparative judgements of singing performance are at the

centre of many self-assessments

(Sloboda, Wise & Peretz, Annals of NY Academy of Sciences 2005)

Groups and measures: overview

Groups: Self-defined ‘Tone Deaf ‘(STD) (N=13) Keele Self-defined ‘Not Tone Deaf ‘(NTD) (N=17) Keele

‘Congenital Amusics’ (CA) (N = 12) Montreal/LondonMeasures: PERCEPTION MBEA; New MBEA sub-tests pitch direction judgement: Non-vocal pitch matching (computer) PRODUCTION Basic vocal control & range (speech & singing) Singing (matching pitches and short patterns; songs) SELF REPORT self-assessment of performance; background questionnaire

Possible deficit patterns: and hypothesised functional causes

TASKS

FUNCTIONALLOCATIONSOF MUSICALDEFICITS

MBEA PITCHDIR

BASIC VOCALTASKS

SINGING NONVOCALPITCHMATCH

SELFASSESS

Perception X X A X X ?

Memory X X A X A ?

Production A A X X A ?

FalseAttribution

A A A A A X

‘X’ = poor performance relative to published norms or controls ‘A’ = average or above average performance relative to published norms or controls

Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA)

Six existing normed subtests: Melodic discrimination: Scale

IntervalContour

Temporal discrimination: MetreRhythm

Musical memory: Recognition

Same pool of 30 melodies for each testSame-different judgement on 2 sequences

MBEA – scale test example

Sound example

MBEA results

Mean scores: STD = 81.04, NTD = 85.58

distribution of scores on MBEA for 3 groups(reprinted from Wise & Sloboda (2008) Musicae Scientiae )

0

10

20

30

40

50

50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90score on test (max 100)

%CASTDNTD

Adding new sub-tests to the MBEA

(a) emotional perception (b) harmony perception

Using same melody pool and same task (same-different judgement)

Emotion sub-test

Professional performers can effectively communicate basic emotions (happy-sad) through performance variation (Juslin 1997)

Professional violinist recorded each tune in 4 ways:

happy very happy sad very sad

Emotion judgement

Are the two performances communicating the same emotion or different emotions?

Sound example Sound example

MBEA scores –old and new tests

50

60

70

80

90

100

ScaleContourIntervalRhythm

MetreMemoryEmotionHarmony

AmusicControl

Real ability or artifact?

It may be that Amusics are capable of processing and appropriately categorising at least one aspect of musical sequences where this does not depend on fine pitch discrimination

But they may be making judgement on non-musical bases (e.g. long vs short duration of stimulus)

Current redesign of test to make all stimuli the same duration.

Harmony sub-test

Three harmonisations for each melody(a) Conventional (diatonic chords from key of melody leading to perfect or plagal cadence)

Standard harmonisation

Alternate harmonisations (last 2 chords only)

(b) Mildly unconventional (using chords from the key, but avoiding plagal and perfect cadence)

(c) Highly unconventional (using chords from outside the key)

Harmony judgement

Are the two sequences the same or different? “Same” examples repeated the conventional

harmonisation twice “Different” examples paired a conventional

with an unconventional harmonisation.

MBEA normals versus amusics

50

60

70

80

90

100

ScaleContourIntervalRhythm

MetreMemoryEmotionHarmony

AmusicControl

Harmony test

Sub-group performance

All groups significantly different from one another (STD range = 13 – 18)

02468

101214161820

amusics STD NTD

CASTDNTD

Purpose of enhanced MBEA

wider range of abilities tested

increased potential for differentiating population sub-groups

MBEA overview

Congenital amusics generally perform poorly on a harmonic same-different task (as poorly as other pitch-based tasks)

Congenital amusics generally perform like normals on an emotion same-different task (and at ceiling).

People who self-define as tone-deaf have MBEA scores close to (but still significantly lower than) normals. They do not share the same deficit profile as congenital amusics.

Deeper understanding of the nature of these deficits will require tests of production and self-ratings on specific tasks.

Recent data from Amusics

New data, as yet incomplete Impossible to give more than a flavour – most

quantitative results from here on don’t include CAs Key observation is that CAs are not a homogeneous

group. Some perfomed above chance on some of our new tasks, some did very badly.

Raises possibility of a) several separable deficits and b) different deficits underlying the ‘typical’ amusic behaviour profile

Is congenital amusia really (just) a pitch perception deficit?

Pitch direction judgement

Participants judge ‘up’ ‘down’ or ‘same’ for pairs of piano tones

Ceiling effect Some amusics do well Different patterns of

low scores– Difficulty spotting

changes– Difficulty

identifying direction of changes 0

102030405060708090

% of participants

13-14 15-16 17-18 19-20 21-22 23-24

Test score (max 24)

Distribution of scores on pitch direction judgment

AmusicTone deafControl

050

100

1st

Qt

r

East

West

Nor th

Non-vocal pitch-matching

Computer task involving adjusting one movable tone to match a fixed tone

Boxplot shows mean deviation in cents from the target

Difference between TD and NTD groups only significant with outliers removed

Amusics much worse than any other group – most accurate performance was on average nearly a semitone off-target.

tone deaf not tone deafamusic control for amusicgroup

0

100

200

300

400

42

26

20

Basic vocal control & range (1)

Objectives: To test the theory that poor singing is linked to a

restricted singing pitch range To establish possible underlying causes of a

restricted range, in particular to rule out low-level physiological problems

Taking several different measures of vocal pitch range allows these distinctions to be made


Essential vocal skills for singing:– Pitch change and pitch sustaining– Extent of conscious control

Tasks– Speech contours– Speech-to-singing– Up & down– Sung range– Slides


05

1015202530

semitones

Speech Slides Sungrange

Amusic (N=12)Control (N=7)

Self defined ‘tone deaf’ group have a reduced vocal range overall, but especially in singing

No sig. overall difference between amusics and controls

Polarised singing behaviour in amusic group

– Most have wide range

– One had a range of less than 3, and the other two did not sustain pitches

05

1015202530

semitones

Speech Slides Sungrange

'Tone deaf'(N=13)'Not tone deaf'(N=17)

Alternative way of showing vocal range data

tone deafnot tone deafamusicmature control

Slides Speech SingingTask

5

10

15

20

25

30

Range in semitones

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

106

4

4

10

116

6

13

Matching pitches and short patterns

Battery consists of:– 6 x single pitches– 4 x 2-note patterns– 4 x 3-note patterns– 4 x 5-note patterns

All in same key, within comfortable untrained singing range, and composed to make musical sense

Sung by a model of participant’s own gender to neutral syllable ‘na’

2 conditions (counterbalanced, within participants)– Echo– Synchronised

Pitch/pattern matching analysis

Fundamental frequency calculated for each note

Accuracy = mean difference between model pitches and participant’s sung pitches, in cents (100 cents = 1 semitone)

Absolute values were used to avoid –ve and +ve differences cancelling each other out

Pitch/pattern matching results

Mean cents deviation: Echo Mean cents deviation: Sync

Main effect of length: F(3,81)=36.32, p<.001; Group*length interaction: F(3,81)=5.90, p=.001; Group*condition interaction: F(1,27)= 5.77, p=.023; Condition*length interaction: F(3,81)=4.70, p=.004

(Reprinted from Wise & Sloboda (2007) Musicae Scientiae)

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 2 3 5

TonedeafNot tonedeaf

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 2 3 5

Singing: Songs

Own choice song (not CAs)

Happy Birthday: - Twice unaccompanied at participant’s own choice of pitch

- Twice accompanied, once at participant’s comfortable pitch, then either a tone higher or lower (except CAs, who only sang unaccompanied)

Performances rated blind by two independent judges, and self-rated by participants during the session.

Expert accuracy rating scale 8. All melody is accurate and in tune, and key is maintained throughout.

7. Key is maintained throughout, and melody accurately represented, but some mistunings (though not enough to alter the pitch-class of the note)

6. Key is maintained throughout and melody mostly accurately represented, but some errors (notes mistuned sufficiently to be ‘wrong’)

5. Melody largely accurate, but singer’s key drifts or wanders. This may be the result of a mistuned interval, from which the singer then continues with more accurate intervals but without returning to the original pitch.

4. Melody fairly accurate, or mostly accurate within individual phrases, but singer changes key abruptly, especially between phrases (e.g. adjusting higher-lying phrases down).

3. Singer accurately represents the contour of the melody but without consistent pitch accuracy or key stability.

2. Words are correct but pitches sound random, and there are errors in contour.

1. Singer sings with little variation in pitch, and may chant in speaking voice rather than singing.

Results: ‘Happy Birthday’ accuracy scores Inter-rater agreement of above 80% (Reprinted from Wise & Sloboda (2007) Musicae Scientiae)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Unaccomp Accomp

Tone deafNot tone deaf

Singing performance and vocal range (1)

Accuracy of Happy Birthday performance correlates with sung range measure to a great extent; to a lesser extent with speech range measure

But speech and sung ranges do not correlate with each other

correlations Speech range

Sung range

HB accomp.

.433p=.008

.702p<.001

HB unaccomp.

.358p=.026

.630p<.001

Singing performance and vocal range (2)

Despite having the underlying vocal capacity to produce a wider pitch range, the STD group don’t do so in singing – but why?

Sustaining pitches is more vocally strenuous than the gliding pitches typical of speech. Higher vocal registers require a different larynx muscle co-ordination to typical speech register.

But Davidson (1994) suggests that restricting one’s singing range is necessary in the process of developing tonal knowledge

So there may be two possibilities:– Less accurate singers have poorer voice function/skills – Less accurate singers have less stable/accurate tonal representations

Differential predictions

Prediction 1: A low-level motor productive deficit should show in a difficulty performing singing-relevant pitch control tasks outside a musical context, i.e. systematic movement of pitch and sustaining of pitch in non-musical vocal tasks.

.

Prediction 2: A difficulty with the planning of muscular co-ordinations for pitch control would be evidenced by

a) greater inaccuracy in the very beginning of vocalisation of a new note and b) less efficient transitions between notes.

.

Prediction 3: A difficulty with sensorimotor integration or with the schematic mappings of sensory and motor representations would be evidenced by poor correction of pitching errors after feedback.

Assessing vocal motor planning and sensory-motor co-ordination

Accuracy of vocal motor planning can be seen at the onset of voicing before sensory feedback can be used

After about 150ms, auditory and proprioceptive feedback can be used to monitor discrepancies between expected and actual outcomes

The relationship between pitch onset and the steady state portion of each sung pitch can therefore provide a window into participants’ ability to coordinate their sensory and motor functions

Box plot of correlation co-efficients between fundamental frequency errors at consonant release and subsequent corrections

tone deaf not tone deafGroup

-0.25

0.00

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

Correlation co-efficient

P. 6, most accurate singer in Vocal Imitation task (NTD)

_ Consonant release - target_ Steady state - target

5a note 15a note 2

5a note 35a note 4

5a note 55b note 1

5b note 25b note 3

5b note 45b note 5

5c note 15c note 2

5c note 35c note 4

5c note 5

Note s

-1000

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500

Cents deviation from target

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P. 8, Singer with biggest errors at note onsets (accurate in steady state) (NTD)


5a note 15a note 2

5a note 35a note 4

5a note 55b note 1

5b note 25b note 3

5b note 45b note 5

5c note 15c note 2

5c note 35c note 4

5c note 5

Notes

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P.213, Least accurate singer in steady states – the TD outlier. Showing apparent absence of error correction.


5a note 15a note 2

5a note 35a note 4

5a note 55b note 1

5b note 25b note 3

5b note 45b note 5

5c note 15c note 2

5c note 35c note 4

5c note 5

Notes

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P. 203, second least accurate singer in steady states making erratic corrections (TD)


5a note 15a note 2

5a note 35a note 4

5a note 55b note 1

5b note 25b note 3

5b note 45b note 5

5c note 15c note 2

5c note 35c note 4

5c note 5

Notes

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P 214, Inaccurate singer showing correction mostly in the right direction but insufficient (TD)


5a note 15a note 2

5a note 35a note 4

5a note 55b note 1

5b note 25b note 3

5b note 45b note 5

5c note 15c note 2

5c note 35c note 4

5c note 5

Notes

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Song self-rating scales

On a scale of 1-7: How accurately do you think you sang the tune? (By accurate I

mean whether you think you got the notes right). (Very inaccurately-very accurately)

To what extent did you feel in control of the quality of the sound that you were able to produce? (Not at all-completely)

How did you think you did compared to how an average person of your age would do on the task? (Much better-much worse, reverse scored)

Results: ‘Happy Birthday’ self-ratings

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Accuracy-unaccompAccuracy-accompQual-unaccomp

Qual-accompPerf-unaccompPerf-accomp


(Reprinted from Wise & Sloboda (2007) Musicae Scientiae)

Results: Self-ratings vs judges’ accuracy scores

Overall correlation between self and judges’ ratings for accuracy is about 0.4 (significant) for both accompanied and unaccompanied Happy Birthdays.

And:

TD group do not self-rate significantly lower than NTD for accuracy when their actual accuracy is controlled for

Other self report data

012345

up & downown song

Happy accomp.Happy unaccomp.

Pitch echoPitch sync

Graph of voice quality self ratings for 6 tasks


Conclusions

Self-defined tone deaf Perform slightly worse in MBEA and other tasks than

normals Are likely to improve with intervention Rate themselves lower than normals, but only as

much as their actual performance merits Are less confident than normals about their voice

quality Performance is highly variable within the group and

within individuals.

Conclusions

Congenital amusics As a group are severely impaired on many tasks compared to

controls But are not a homogeneous group The range of abilities and behaviours suggests the possibility of

multiple underlying deficits, which may be present singly or in combination e.g. pitch perception, pitch memory and production.

Musical skill emerges as multi-faceted. Even people with apparently severe impairments can show skills in appropriate tasks

Where next

Try to identify patterns of test performance which differentiate within the CA and STD groups, looking across all tests. Are there clusters characterising “syndromes”?

Cognitive and motivational implications for the self-defined “tone deaf” and “untalented”

Research implications

Full understanding of musical capacities requires a range of perceptual and productive tasks

Suitable productive tests can be used effectively with the musically untrained

Practical Implications

Interaction between capacity and achievement is complex

Many people believe themselves to have reached genetically-determined limits on their musical achievement

In the vast majority of cases these self-beliefs are mistaken

In such cases, musical expertise is available, with the right circumstances, motivation, and activity.

"assessing the capacities of the self-defined tone-deaf : deconstructing a myth"

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