Musical training, individual differences and the cocktail party problem.

Jayaganesh Swaminathan,Aniruddh D Patel,Gerald Kidd, Jr,Timothy M Streeter,Christine R Mason,Virginia Best

doi:10.1038/srep11628

Jayaganesh Swaminathan, Aniruddh D Patel + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep11628

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Journal: Scientific reports	Publication Date: Jun 26, 2015
Citations: 119	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Tufts University, Boston University

Abstract

Are musicians better able to understand speech in noise than non-musicians? Recent findings have produced contradictory results. Here we addressed this question by asking musicians and non-musicians to understand target sentences masked by other sentences presented from different spatial locations, the classical ‘cocktail party problem’ in speech science. We found that musicians obtained a substantial benefit in this situation, with thresholds ~6 dB better than non-musicians. Large individual differences in performance were noted particularly for the non-musically trained group. Furthermore, in different conditions we manipulated the spatial location and intelligibility of the masking sentences, thus changing the amount of ‘informational masking’ (IM) while keeping the amount of ‘energetic masking’ (EM) relatively constant. When the maskers were unintelligible and spatially separated from the target (low in IM), musicians and non-musicians performed comparably. These results suggest that the characteristics of speech maskers and the amount of IM can influence the magnitude of the differences found between musicians and non-musicians in multiple-talker “cocktail party” environments. Furthermore, considering the task in terms of the EM-IM distinction provides a conceptual framework for future behavioral and neuroscientific studies which explore the underlying sensory and cognitive mechanisms contributing to enhanced “speech-in-noise” perception by musicians.

Highlights

Discrimination in sentences[11,12], and production and perception of second language phonological contrasts[13,14], multiple studies have found musical training to be associated with enhanced speech processing
We focus not on questions of causality, which require longitudinal studies with random assignment to musical vs. nonmusical training, but rather on attempting to determine whether musicians show benefits for selective listening in a cocktail-party like listening task
We found that musicians performed significantly better than non-musicians on a task that emulated the classical “cocktail party problem”, in which a listener attempts to understand one talker while ignoring intelligible speech from other talkers who are spatially separated from the target talker

Summary

Introduction

Discrimination in sentences[11,12], and production and perception of second language phonological contrasts[13,14], multiple studies have found musical training to be associated with enhanced speech processing. In the practice of their art, musicians depend upon their ability to listen selectively to individual instruments within a musical ensemble and to shift the focus of attention from one instrument to another at will This bears a striking similarity to the problem of attending to a specific human voice among several competing voices, an extensively-studied problem known as the “cocktail party” problem[16,17]. In terms of basic research, if musicians show clear advantages for hearing speech in noise, this would offer researchers a useful population for exploring the mechanisms (sensory and cognitive) that contribute to better speech-in-noise perception This in turn could help hearing scientists understand the factors underlying the large individual differences mentioned above. By using speech as the masking stimulus we create both EM and IM, but crucially, we can manipulate the maskers in specific ways to vary the amount of IM in different conditions, from very high to very low

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