{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/juzrh","title":"Amplitude modulation perceptually distinguishes music and speech","abstract":"Music and speech are complex and distinct auditory signals that are both foundational to the human experience. The mechanisms underpinning each domain are widely investigated. However, how little acoustic information is in fact required to distinguish between them remains an open question. Here we test the hypothesis that a sound’s amplitude modulation (AM) is a critical acoustic feature. In contrast to paradigms using ecologically valid, complex acoustic signals (that can be challenging to interpret), we use an aggressively reductionist approach: if AM rate and AM regularity are critical for perceptually distinguishing music and speech, the judgement on artificially noise-synthesized ambiguous audio signals should align with their AM parameters. Across four experiments (N = 335), signals with a higher peak AM frequency tend to be judged as speech and lower AM as music, especially among musically sophisticated listeners. In addition, noise signals with more regular AM are judged as music. The data suggest that the auditory system can rely on a low-level acoustic property as basic as AM to distinguish music from speech, a surprising principle that provokes both neurophysiological and evolutionary experiments and speculations.","journal":"PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)","year":2022,"id":297801,"datarank":0.32958368660043297,"base_score":2.1972245773362196,"endowment":2.1972245773362196,"self_citation_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9618,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":452814,"name":"Xiangbin Teng","orcid":"0000-0001-5360-4957","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986901,"name":"Florencia Assaneo","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277504,"name":"David Poeppel","orcid":"0000-0003-0184-163X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986339,"name":"Andrew Chang","orcid":"0000-0001-6745-4435","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":82,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:31.270564Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}