Can Listeners Hear Who Is Singing? The Role of Listener Experience in Singer Discrimination Across Pitch

Previous research has shown that listeners are unable to identify who is singing across pitch when the voices are unfamiliar to them. Implementing a very short training period, however, greatly improves this ability, but only when the voices being compared are of different voice category. The objective of this study was to determine whether experienced listeners with highly developed knowledge of voice categories can more easily discriminate between singers across pitch.

This study used an ABX paradigm where listeners heard two different singers singing "ah" at the same pitch. Listeners identified which of the two singers produced a third "ah" at a different pitch. Stimuli were recorded from two baritones, two tenors, two mezzo-sopranos, and two sopranos across a 1.5 octave range. Data were collected from 42 inexperienced listeners and 27 experienced listeners.

Experienced listeners were better at singer discrimination across pitch than were inexperienced listeners for all conditions except same-category comparisons at the interval of the third. Experienced listeners were better at singer discrimination across pitch than were slightly trained listeners for all conditions except same-category female singers at all pitch intervals.

The ability to discriminate singers across pitch is the greatest for experienced listeners, followed by slightly trained inexperienced listeners, followed by inexperienced listeners.