Relationships among musical training and pitch matching in children and adults

Abstract

This experiment attempted to determine if individuals with extensive musical training’s pitch perception and memory were more resistant to degradation (e.g., time and interference) than that of individuals with limited musical training. It is known that musical training influences cortical sound processing through learning-based processes, but also at the preattentive level within the brainstem. Pitch memory abilities were investigated in 66 participants with no known hearing, attention, or cognitive impairment. Participants were placed into subgroups based on age (young children, older children, and adults) and their self-reported musical training experience. Two experiments measuring auditory perception and memory skills for pitch were collected, the pitch pattern span (PPS; Weaver, DiGiovanni, & Ries, 2015) and a pitch matching retention task based on Ross, Olsen, and Gore’s procedure (2003). We found that individuals with greater musical training exhibited enhanced pitch perception and memory processes and smaller standard deviation across pitch matches. Unexpectedly, based on the paradigm, the young children demonstrated significantly sharper (higher) constant error across pitch matches than the older participants. These and additional findings will be discussed with reference to task parameters which attempted to remove the typically required knowledge of musical nomenclature in pitch matching tasks