Re: AP in all of us? New evidence from speech research

I have not participated in this discussion group previously, but the thread of this discussion is getting close to work that we are doing. In fact, we have an article under review in JASA that deals with the issue of whether people use a fixed or some type of variable reference to maintain a particular voice fundamental frequency. I am more of a motor physiologist by training and approach the issue of pitch memory from that angle. In our work, we provide incorrect auditory pitch feedback (that is, pitch-shifted auditory feedback) to subjects while they are sustaining a constant note. Our work to date suggests people use a variable reference, be it pitch memory or something else. Our work also suggests that the auditory feedback is much more important for this control process than other types of sensory feedback, such as from muscle or joint receptors in the laryngeal region. Unfortunately, we haven't done enough work on this issue in trained singers yet, and so I can't address some of the issues that have been raised in this discussion. I would mention, however, that several years ago, I sinusoidally modulated voice pitch feedback by + and - 100 cents at a frequency of about .1 Hz to a singer with perfect pitch (or absolute pitch if you prefer), and she was unable to control her voice F0. That is, the modulated pitch feedback drove her voice F0 output up and down in a manner that compensated for the changes in pitch feedback. By modulating her voice output, she kept the auditory feedback pitch at a set level. I should add that this process happens automatically. The people that we have tested in this type of paradigm automatically change their voice F0 to compensate for changes in pitch of auditory feedback.

The question was also asked about whether singers use some type of sensation from their larynx to hit a specific note. This idea has probably been suggested by many people, but Johan Sundberg in his book, The Science of the Singing Voice, refers to this as muscle or proprioceptive memory. This type of feedback would help the trained singer hit or maintain a note in a situation where there was a lot of other noise or