The Dùndún Drum Helps Us Understand How We Process Speech and Music

Every day, you hear many sounds in your environment, like speech, music, animal calls, or passing cars. How do tease apart these unique categories of sounds? We aimed to understand more about how people distinguish speech and music by using an instrument that can both “speak” play music: the dùndún talking drum. were interested whether could tell if sound produced drum was music. People who familiar with good at task, but so those had never heard dùndún, suggesting there are general characteristics define categories. observed is faster, regular, variable volume than “speech.” This research helps us interesting provides insights humans two important types sound: