Death Metal music with violent themes is characterized by vocalizations with unnaturally low fundamental frequencies and high levels of distortion and roughness. These attributes decrease the signal to noise ratio, rendering linguistic content difficult to understand and leaving the impression of growling, screaming, or other non-linguistic vocalizations associated with aggression and fear. Here, we compared the ability of fans and non-fans of Death Metal to accurately perceive sung words extracted from Death Metal music. We also examined whether music training confers an additional benefit to intelligibility. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design (fans/non-fans, musicians/nonmusicians), four groups of participants (n = 16 per group) were presented with 24 sung words (one per trial), extracted from the popular American Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse. On each trial, participants completed a four-alternative forced-choice word recognition task. Intelligibility (word recognition accuracy) was above chance for all groups and was significantly enhanced for fans (65.88%) relative to non-fans (51.04%). In the fan group, intelligibility between musicians and nonmusicians was statistically similar. In the non-fan group, intelligibility was significantly greater for musicians relative to nonmusicians. Results are discussed in the context of perceptual learning and the benefits of expertise for decoding linguistic information in sub-optimum acoustic conditions.

中文翻译：

---

听众的专业知识提高了死亡金属音乐中发声的清晰度

具有激烈主题的死亡金属音乐的特征是发声具有不自然的低基频以及高水平的失真和粗糙感。这些属性降低了信噪比，使语言内容难以理解，并留下了与侵略和恐惧相关的咆哮，尖叫或其他非语言发声的印象。在这里，我们比较了“死亡金属”的粉丝和非粉丝对从“死亡金属”音乐中提取的演唱词进行准确感知的能力。我们还研究了音乐培训是否为清晰度提供了额外的好处。在2×2的受试者间析因设计（粉丝/非粉丝，音乐家/非音乐家）中，向四组参与者（每组n = 16）展示了24个唱词（每个试验一个），摘自流行的美国死亡金属乐队Cannibal Corpse。在每个试验中，参与者都完成了四项强制选择单词识别任务。所有组的可理解性（单词识别准确度）均高于机会，相对于非粉丝（51.04％），粉丝（65.88％）的可识别性显着提高。在歌迷组中，音乐家和非音乐家之间的清晰度在统计上是相似的。在非粉丝群体中，相对于非音乐家，音乐家的清晰度明显更高。在感性学习的背景下讨论了结果，并讨论了在次优声学条件下解码语言信息的专业知识的优势。所有组的可理解性（单词识别准确度）均高于机会，相对于非粉丝（51.04％），粉丝（65.88％）的可识别性显着提高。在爱好者群体中，音乐家和非音乐家之间的清晰度在统计上是相似的。在非粉丝群体中，相对于非音乐家，音乐家的清晰度明显更高。在感性学习的背景下讨论了结果，并讨论了在次优声学条件下解码语言信息的专业知识的优势。所有组的可理解性（单词识别准确度）均高于机会，相对于非粉丝（51.04％），粉丝（65.88％）的可识别性显着提高。在歌迷组中，音乐家和非音乐家之间的清晰度在统计上是相似的。在非粉丝群体中，相对于非音乐家，音乐家的清晰度明显更高。在感性学习的背景下讨论了结果，并讨论了在次优声学条件下解码语言信息的专业知识的优势。