The Relationship Between Pitch Discrimination and Fundamental Frequency Variation: Effects of Singing Status and Vocal Hyperfunction.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between pitch discrimination and fundamental frequency (f) variation in running speech, with consideration of factors such as singing status and vocal hyperfunction (VH).

Method: Female speakers (18-69 years) with typical voices (26 non-singers; 27 singers) and speakers with VH (22 non-singers; 30 singers) completed a pitch discrimination task and read the Rainbow Passage. The pitch discrimination task was a two-alternative forced choice procedure, in which participants determined whether tokens were the same or different.