The effects of musicality and language background on cue integration in pitch perception

Pitch perception involves the processing of multidimensional acoustic cues, and listeners can exhibit different cue integration strategies in interpreting pitch. This study aims to examine whether musicality and language experience have effects on listeners' pitch perception strategies. Both Mandarin and English listeners were recruited to participate in two experiments: (1) a pitch classification experiment that tested their relative reliance on f0 and spectral cues, and (2) the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities that objectively quantified their musical aptitude as continuous musicality scores. Overall, the results show a strong musicality effect: Listeners with higher musicality scores relied more on f0 in pitch perception, while listeners with lower musicality scores were more likely to attend to spectral cues. However, there were no effects of language experience on musicality scores or cue integration strategies in pitch perception. These results suggest that less musical or even amusic subjects may not suffer impairment in linguistic pitch processing due to the multidimensional nature of pitch cues.