Abstract
The current study investigates auditory-motor coupling in musically trained participants using a Stroop-type task that required the execution of simple finger sequences according to aurally presented number sequences (e.g., “2,” “4,” “5,” “3,” “1”). Digital remastering was used to manipulate the pitch contour of the number sequences such that they were either congruent or incongruent with respect to the resulting action sequence. Conservatoire-level violinists showed a strong effect of congruency manipulation (increased response time for incongruent vs. congruent trials), in comparison to a control group of non-musicians. In Experiment 2, this paradigm was used to determine whether pedagogical background would influence this effect in a group of young violinists. Suzuki trained violinists differed significantly from those with no musical background, while traditionally trained violinists did not. The findings extend previous research in this area by demonstrating that obligatory audio-motor coupling is directly related to a musicians' expertise on their instrument of study and is influenced by pedagogy.
Highlights
Professional musicians have been subject to extensive research in recent years, owing to their expertise in sensorimotor mapping
A comparison of these ratios using an independent-samples t-test revealed significantly higher ratios in the violinist group, t(24) = 4.2, p < 0.001 compared to the non-musician group indicating a larger effect of the congruency manipulation for violinists
This revealed a significant facilitation effect of 41 ms for congruent compared to incongruent trials for the violinist group, t(12) = 4.5, p < 0.001, and no facilitation for the non-musician group, t(12) = 1.4, p = 0.147
Summary
Professional musicians have been subject to extensive research in recent years, owing to their expertise in sensorimotor mapping. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org demonstrated effects on response time and, in certain cases, errors, when the association between actions and their perceptual effects was manipulated: Pianists were slower to play a musical chord or two note sequences (indicated via various types of visually presented imperative stimuli) when hearing a chord that was incongruent with the required response While such results suggested that the auditory-motor coupling seen in pianists is likely to be pre-attentive, subsequent findings concerning pitch/space compatibility effects provided a potential alternative explanation for these musician/non-musician differences. The finding of greater interference in musicians compared with non-musicians could potentially be explained on the basis of pitch/space compatibility effects, rather than purely as a function of audio-motor mappings acquired during piano training
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