Testing the relationship between musical training and context effects in music perception

Abstract

Contrast effects occur in all sensory modalities and are critical for auditory perception. When successive sounds differ in their spectra, the auditory system exaggerates this difference, and we perceive a larger change than is physically present. This is known as a spectral contrast effect (SCE). For example, when a context sound is filtered to emphasize the frequencies of the French horn (a predominantly low-frequency spectrum), listeners categorize a later target sound as tenor saxophone (comparatively higher-frequency spectrum) more often [Stilp et al., Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 72(2), 470–480 (2010)]. Musicians outperform non-musicians on many auditory tasks, including pitch discrimination, but whether this ‘musician advantage’ extends to SCEs in music perception is unknown. Here, on each trial, non-musicians and musicians heard a context sound (string quintet filtered to emphasize the frequencies of the horn or saxophone) before categorizing the target sound (six-step series that varied from horn to saxophone). Musicians are predicted to have larger SCE magnitudes than non-musicians due to their enhanced auditory skills. However, if musicians do not show larger SCEs, this suggests musical training might improve only some aspects of music perception. Results from this task, a pitch discrimination task, and musical experience questionnaires will be discussed.