Pitch-Matching in Poor Singers: Human Model Advantage

Previous studies on action imitation have shown an advantage for biological stimuli compared with nonbiological stimuli, possibly because of the role played by the mirror system. By contrast, little is known on whether such an advantage also takes place in the auditory domain, related to voice imitation. Objectives/Hypothesis In this study, we wanted to test the hypothesis that auditory stimuli could be more accurately reproduced when the timbre is human than when the timbre is synthetic. Methods Eighteen participants judged as poor singers and 14 controls were presented with vocal and synthetic singing models and had to reproduce them. Results and Conclusion Results showed that poor singers were significantly helped by the human model. This effect of the human model on production might be linked to the preactivation of motor representations (auditory mirror system) during voice perception, which may in turn facilitate the imitative vocal gesture.