Previous research has led to the hypothesis that poor-pitch singing is the result of a weakness in the auditory/vocal loop. The present study evaluated this hypothesis in a training paradigm that used visual feedback to augment potentially faulty auditory-vocal associations. Following pretest with the Seattle Singing Accuracy Protocol (SSAP), participants were randomly assigned to one of three 20-min training conditions: (1) visual feedback training with auditory doubling, in which participants could both see and hear real-time feedback showing the relationship between their sung pitch and the target, (2) auditory feedback training, where participants relied only on airborne auditory feedback from their own voice, and (3) control training which involved imitation of speech from a foreign language instruction recording. After training, the SSAP was administered again as a posttest measure. There was a general improvement from pretest to posttest across all groups. However, the effect of training was only significant for participants who received visual feedback training, with greater gains in visual training than either of the other conditions. This pattern of results was particularly pronounced for performance on 4-note melodies in the SSAP, in contrast to single pitch matching. Visual feedback may facilitate accuracy by substituting for inaccurate auditory-motor associations. The fact that training, even over a very short time-span, can have significant effects on singing underlines the importance of practice, and supports the hypothesis that singing is a learned skill that can benefit from experience and may not simply reflect an inherited talent.

先前的研究导致了这样一种假设，即音调不佳的歌唱是听觉/人声环路薄弱的结果。本研究在训练范式中评估了这一假设，该范式使用视觉反馈来增强潜在错误的听觉-声音关联。在使用西雅图歌唱准确度协议 (SSAP) 进行预测试后，参与者被随机分配到三个 20 分钟的训练条件之一：(1) 听觉加倍的视觉反馈训练，参与者可以看到和听到实时反馈，显示他们演唱的音高与目标之间的关系，（2）听觉反馈训练，参与者仅依靠他们自己声音的空中听觉反馈，以及（3）控制训练，包括模仿外语教学录音中的语音。训练结束后，SSAP 再次作为后测措施进行管理。从前测到后测，所有组都有普遍的改进。然而，训练的效果只对接受视觉反馈训练的参与者显着，视觉训练比其他任何一种情况都有更大的收获。与单音高匹配相比，这种结果模式对于 SSAP 中 4 音符旋律的演奏尤为明显。视觉反馈可以通过替代不准确的听觉-运动关联来提高准确性。训练，即使是在很短的时间内，也会对歌唱产生重大影响这一事实强调了练习的重要性，并支持歌唱是一种可以从经验中受益的习得技能的假设，而不是简单地反映遗传的才能。