We examined pitch-error detection in well-known songs sung with or without meaningful lyrics. In Experiment 1, adults heard the initial phrase of familiar songs sung with lyrics or repeating syllables (la) and judged whether they heard an out-of-tune note. Half of the renditions had a single pitch error (50 or 100 cents); half were in tune. Listeners were poorer at pitch-error detection in songs with lyrics. In Experiment 2, within-note pitch fluctuations in the same performances were eliminated by auto-tuning. Again, pitch-error detection was worse for renditions with lyrics (50 cents), suggesting adverse effects of semantic processing. In Experiment 3, songs were sung with repeating syllables or scat syllables to ascertain the role of phonetic variability. Performance was poorer for scat than for repeating syllables, indicating adverse effects of phonetic variability, but overall performance exceeded Experiment 1. In Experiment 4, listeners evaluated songs in all styles (repeating syllables, scat, lyrics) within the same session. Performance was best with repeating syllables (50 cents) and did not differ between scat or lyric versions. In short, tracking the pitches of highly familiar songs was impaired by the presence of words, an impairment stemming primarily from phonetic variability rather than interference from semantic processing.

我们检查了在有或没有有意义的歌词演唱的知名歌曲中的音高错误检测。在实验 1 中，成年人听到用歌词或重复音节 ( la )演唱的熟悉歌曲的初始短语，并判断他们是否听到跑调的音符。一半的演绎有一个音高错误（50 或 100 美分）；一半是一致的。听众对带有歌词的歌曲的音高错误检测能力较差。在实验2中，通过自动调谐消除了相同演奏中音符内的音高波动。同样，对于带有歌词的演绎（50 美分），音高错误检测更差，表明语义处理的不利影响。在实验 3 中，用重复的音节或scat演唱歌曲音节以确定语音变异的作用。scat 的表现比重复音节的表现差，表明语音可变性的不利影响，但总体表现超过实验 1。在实验 4 中，听众在同一会话中评估所有风格（重复音节、scat、歌词）的歌曲。重复音节（50 美分）的表现最好，并且在 scat 或歌词版本之间没有差异。简而言之，跟踪高度熟悉的歌曲的音高会因单词的存在而受到损害，这种损害主要源于语音的可变性，而不是语义处理的干扰。