Auditory Pitch Training by Providing Error Information with Haptic Feedback

초록

Music appreciation plays a significant role in modern people's cultural activities. However, even with the popularity of music, more people are limited in fully understanding it due to the lack of proper music education. The first and key step in music education is the auditory pitch perception, which is rarely innate but is trained with repeated listening to different pitches. In this study, we propose a novel method for training the pitch to a user by providing the pitch error information in musical pitch perception with haptic feedback. We built smartphone-sized mock-ups that can provide the user with vibrotactile feedback corresponding to the perceived auditory pitch error. Three experiments were conducted to test the validity of the proposed method. Experiment 1 was conducted to see whether the proposed method benefited the auditory pitch perception, and the results indicated a significantly higher rate of auditory pitch perception with the availability of haptic feedback. Experiment 2 was conducted to see whether signal modulation or controlling the number of actuators was effective for the haptic rendering of perceived auditory pitch error information. The results showed significantly better performance when the perceived auditory pitch error information was rendered with the number of actuators. Experiment 3 tested the proposed method in terms of whether the participants retain the learned auditory pitch perception one day after initial training. The results indicated that the group that had the auditory pitch training had an improved auditory pitch perception one day after the training.

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