Singing in Noise: Can Music-Based Acoustic Features Aid Speech-in-Noise Comprehension?

The ability to understand speech-in-noise (SPiN) can be improved with musical training, and music perception is resistant to age-related decline compared to other aspects of auditory cognition. This leads to the possibility that music-based forms of rehabilitation could improve SPiN comprehension. One possible approach to this putative rehabilitation program is to use a scaffolding technique, where a cognitive strength is used to scaffold a cognitive weakness. The first step in this line of research is to determine a source of auditory cognitive strength in SPiN comprehension. Accordingly, the goal of the current study was to determine if adding musical features to target speech could improve SPiN comprehension. Participants were presented with a series of sentences that were either spoken, sung, rapped, or sung with speech-like rhythm. Sentences were presented in noise, and the signal-to-noise ratio [SNR] was adapted based on accuracy. A 50% SNR threshold was determined for each condition. Overall, performance was best when target sentences were sung with speech-like rhythm, and worst when they were sung with musical rhythm. This pattern of results suggests that musical pitch contours can aid in understanding SPiN, and could potentially be used as a cognitive scaffold (i.e. a cognitive strength compared to understanding naturally spoken SPiN) to improve the ability to understand SPiN.