Speech-in-noise perception is linked to rhythm production skills in adult percussionists and non-musicians

ABSTRACT

Speech rhythms guide perception, especially in noise. We recently revealed that percussionists outperform non-musicians in speech-in-noise perception, with better speech-in-noise perception associated with better rhythm discrimination across a range of rhythmic expertise. Here, we consider rhythm production skills, specifically drumming to a beat (metronome or music) and to sequences (metrical or jittered patterns), as well as speech-in-noise perception in adult percussionists and non-musicians. Given the absence of a regular beat in speech, we hypothesise that processing of sequences is more important for speech-in-noise perception than the ability to entrain to a regular beat. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that the sequence-based drumming measures predict speech-in-noise perception, above and beyond hearing thresholds and IQ, whereas the beat-based measures do not. Outcomes suggest temporal patterns may help disambiguate speech under degraded listening conditions, extending theoretical considerations about speech rhythm to the everyday challenge of listening in noise.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech perception
• music
• rhythm
• temporal processing

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Britta Swedenborg and Manto Agouridou for assistance with data collection and processing, and Trent Nicol, Elaine Thompson and Travis White-Schwoch who provided comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant number F31DC014891-01] to J.S., the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) and the Knowles Hearing Center. The authors declare no competing financial interests.