How do perceptual benefits from musical experience compare with those from speech experience?

Abstract

Acoustic consistency facilitates perceptual processing while acoustic variability challenges it. This is evident in perceptual interference tasks, in which listeners categorize a target word/pitch when produced by either a single talker/musical instrument or multiple talkers/instruments. Responses are faster and/or more accurate for single-talker (e.g., Stilp & Theodore, 2020 AP&P) and single-instrument conditions (e.g., Shorey et al., 2022 ASA). While patterns of results are parallel across domains, listening experience is not. Participants in speech tasks are experts at their native language, but in the music task the contribution of musical experience is unclear because Shorey et al. tested solely nonmusicians. This raises two questions: (1) does more musical training increasingly protect against timbral variability when making pitch judgments, and (2) how does musical expertise compare with speech expertise? To evaluate these questions, we tested native English speaking nonmusicians (<2 years of formal musical training), intermediate musicians (2–9 years), and experienced musicians (10 + years) in speech interference and music interference tasks. We predict that musical training offers resilience to variability, such that interference in the music task will decrease with increasing musical experience. We also predict correlated interference for advanced musicians (i.e., experts) across speech and music tasks. Results will be discussed.