The perception of pitch and engagement in melodic singing significantly contribute to the appreciation and comprehension of music. Notably, for hard-of-hearing individuals, perceiving pitch and singing play crucial roles as effective aids in auditory rehabilitation. However, the limited perception of pitch, stemming from the constraints of hearing devices, poses challenges in the learning process of recognizing and vocalizing melodies. In this study, we developed a wearable vibrotactile glove, TTS+, designed to convert musical tones into the corresponding vibrotactile patterns, complemented by an associated training application. After ten training sessions with our system, the participants exhibited notable improvements in pitch perception and the capacity to reproduce melodies through singing compared with their pre-test baseline without vibrotactile feedback. Beyond quantitative outcomes, findings from user experiences obtained through user feedback during training and post-test interviews offer valuable perspectives and constraints for our study, which may be further investigated in future studies.

This work was accepted at International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 2025.

Details : https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2025.2452192