Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26029088›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2015

On drawing a line through the spectrogram: how do we understand deficits of vocal pitch imitation?

Peter Q Pfordresher, Pauline Larrouy-Maestri

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Effects of vocal-motor interference on vocal pitch imitation.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025
    Article
  2. Article
  3. Singing and Social Identity in Young Children.Frontiers in psychology · 2022
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Peter Q PfordresherDepartment of Psychology, University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY, USA.
Pauline Larrouy-MaestriDepartment of Psychology, University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY, USA ; Department of Psychology, University of Liège Liège, Belgium ; Department of Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics Frankfurt, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In recent years there has been a remarkable increase in research focusing on deficits of pitch production in singing. A critical concern has been the identification of "poor pitch singers," which we refer to more generally as individuals having a "vocal pitch imitation deficit." The present paper includes a critical assessment of the assumption that vocal pitch imitation abilities can be treated as a dichotomy. Though this practice may be useful for data analysis and may be necessary within educational practice, we argue that this approach is complicated by a series of problems. Moreover, we argue that a more informative (and less problematic) approach comes from analyzing vocal pitch imitation abilities on a continuum, referred to as effect magnitude regression, and offer examples concerning how researchers may analyze data using this approach. We also argue that the understanding of this deficit may be better served by focusing on the effects of experimental manipulations on different individuals, rather than attempt to treat values of individual measures, and isolated tasks, as absolute measures of ability.

Indexed as

musical deficitsmusic performancepoor-pitch singingsinging assessmentvocal imitation

Identifiers

PMID26029088
PMCPMC4432667

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.