Abstract
The extent to which auditory experience can shape general auditory perceptual abilities is still under constant debate. Some studies show that specific auditory expertise may have a general effect on auditory perceptual abilities, while others show a more limited influence, exhibited only in a relatively narrow range associated with the area of expertise. The current study addresses this issue by examining experience-dependent enhancement in perceptual abilities in the auditory domain. Three experiments were performed. In the first experiment, 12 pop and rock musicians and 15 non-musicians were tested in frequency discrimination (DLF), intensity discrimination, spectrum discrimination (DLS), and time discrimination (DLT). Results showed significant superiority of the musician group only for the DLF and DLT tasks, illuminating enhanced perceptual skills in the key features of pop music, in which miniscule changes in amplitude and spectrum are not critical to performance. The next two experiments attempted to differentiate between generalization and specificity in the influence of auditory experience, by comparing subgroups of specialists. First, seven guitar players and eight percussionists were tested in the DLF and DLT tasks that were found superior for musicians. Results showed superior abilities on the DLF task for guitar players, though no difference between the groups in DLT, demonstrating some dependency of auditory learning on the specific area of expertise. Subsequently, a third experiment was conducted, testing a possible influence of vowel density in native language on auditory perceptual abilities. Ten native speakers of German (a language characterized by a dense vowel system of 14 vowels), and 10 native speakers of Hebrew (characterized by a sparse vowel system of five vowels), were tested in a formant discrimination task. This is the linguistic equivalent of a DLS task. Results showed that German speakers had superior formant discrimination, demonstrating highly specific effects for auditory linguistic experience as well. Overall, results suggest that auditory superiority is associated with the specific auditory exposure.
Highlights
A strong linkage between extensive auditory learning and improved auditory perceptual abilities has been demonstrated in a number of prior studies
It has been shown that musicians posses superior auditory processing abilities (e.g., Kishon-Rabin et al, 2001; Micheyl et al, 2006; Bidelman et al, 2011; Mandikal Vasuki et al, 2016), and that auditory experience is associated with enhanced neural sound processing (Tervaniemi et al, 2006, 2016; Vuust et al, 2012) as well as structural changes in gray matter (Karpati et al, 2017)
A number of prior studies demonstrate that individuals with expertise in the processing of complex auditory information show general superiority in the auditory domain (Zuk et al, 2013), including enhanced frequency discrimination (DLF) (Spiegel and Watson, 1984; Koelsch et al, 1999; Kishon-Rabin et al, 2001; Schon et al, 2004; Micheyl et al, 2006; Besson et al, 2007; Schellenberg and Moreno, 2009; Bidelman et al, 2011; Mandikal Vasuki et al, 2016), harmonic sensitivity (Koelsch et al, 2002; Tervaniemi et al, 2005; Musacchia et al, 2008; Zendel and Alain, 2009), timbre sensitivity (Chartrand and Belin, 2006; Sheft et al, 2013; Hutka et al, 2015), and rhythm and meter discrimination (Krumhansl, 2000; Huss et al, 2011; Marie et al, 2011)
Summary
A strong linkage between extensive auditory learning and improved auditory perceptual abilities has been demonstrated in a number of prior studies. An alternative interpretation to these results assumes a different direction of causality, namely that superior auditory performance in musicians originates from a general enhancement in cognitive performance, spanning from executive functions to creativity (for a review, see Benz et al, 2016) Further support for this line of thought comes from behavioral studies demonstrating a superiority of musicians in executive control skills and working memory abilities (e.g., Bialystok and DePape, 2009; Pallesen et al, 2010; George and Coch, 2011; Mandikal Vasuki et al, 2016), as well as objective measures (James et al, 2014). Other researchers postulate that superior auditory performance is highly specific to the characteristics of the trained auditory skills (Seppänen et al, 2007; Vuust et al, 2012; Tervaniemi et al, 2016)
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