title: Pitch-matching in poor singers: human model advantage.
abstract: 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.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Parole et Langage, CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France. yohana.leveque@lpl-aix.fr
authors.forename: Yohana
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lévêque
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Giovanni
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schön
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001299:Audiometry; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult