Suppression of vocal responses to auditory perturbation with real-time visual feedback

Speakers can adjust pitch using auditory feedback through a short-latency corrective response known as the pitch-shift response (PSR). Suppression of the PSR denotes on-line stabilization of pitch. In this paper, the hypothesis that pitch-shift responses can be suppressed with real-time visual feedback of vocal F0 is investigated. Mandarin speakers and naive speakers without tonal language experience were instructed to produce the sustained vowel /a/ and Mandarin tone /ma1/ in an audio-only condition and a separate audio-visual condition. Both Mandarin speakers and naive speakers suppressed pitch-shift responses in the audio-visual condition, regardless of task (/a/ or /ma1/) and stimulus magnitude (25 cents or 200 cents). These findings suggest that multisensory feedback (audio-visual) can improve the stability of voice F0. The benefit of audio-visual integration is independent of language experience.