Formal Musical Training Research Articles

Music Use in Exercise: A Questionnaire Study

Although there is much research looking at music’s effects on sport and exercise performance, little is known about exercisers’ own application of music during workouts. An online questionnaire exploring its relationship with gender, formal music training, personality and 5K performance was completed by 282 regularly exercising participants (159 women, 116 men, 6 undisclosed, Mage =37.68, SD = 10.16). Women were more likely to use music during exercise than men (p = .011), and to synchronize to the beat (p = .002), and women’s preferences were spread over a range of pop, rock, and dance music, whereas men’s were focused on rock-related styles. Being open to new experiences was associated with preferring rock, metal, and indie music (p = .042) and those who intentionally synchronised their movements were more open to new experiences than non-synchronizers (p = .003), although a minority of participants synchronised intentionally. Most gym users listened to their own music in the gym rather than music played by the facility. These findings provide new insights into exercise music use, challenging assumptions that formal music training affects how music is applied in exercise, and that synchronization to the beat is the “norm” for exercisers listening to music.

Relationship between Intelligence Quotient and Musical Ability in Children with Cochlear Implantation.

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) may experience few opportunities for positive musical experiences, and musical perception is therefore often not sufficiently developed. This paper investigates and discusses the relationship between intelligence quotient (IQ) and musical ability in children with CIs compared with children with normal hearing. This was a comparative analytical study conducted in 48 children with unilateral CI and 48 normal-hearing children, 6-8 years of age, with 'normal' IQ and no formal music training. The average IQ score in the experimental and control groups were 105.41 and 106.31, respectively. No statistically significant differences were detected between Raven's IQ scores in both groups. Data were collected by administering Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices IQ Tests and the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities (MBEMA) Test, consisting of scale, contour, interval, rhythm, and memory sections. Mean total MBEMA score in the experimental and control groups was 58.93 and 72.16 (out of 100), respectively. Significant differences were evident between scores of children with CIs in comparison with their normal-hearing peers (P≤0.001). A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r≥0.38) and experimental (r≥0.37) groups was observed. IQ has a noticeable effect on music processing and facilitates the perception of various musical elements. With regard to the mutual relationship between IQ and musical skills, this study illustrates the advantage of determining music perception scores and highlights the importance of appropriate musical intervention in order to enhance auditory neural plasticity, especially in children with cochlear implantation.

Acústica del violín y reconocimiento tímbrico por músicos profesionales y no-músicos

El objetivo de este trabajo fue indagar en las posibilidades tímbricas producidas por dos violinistas profesionales y analizar la capacidad de reconocimiento de los sonidos resultantes, tanto por una muestra de músicos como de no-músicos, con el fin de valorar la importancia que se le debe dar al timbre en el proceso de enseñanza del violín. Para ello, se ha seleccionado una muestra de 60 adultos, de los cuales la mitad son músicos profesionales titulados y la otra mitad carecen de formación musical reglada. Se utilizó como instrumento la prueba experimental Ikarak que consiste en la ejecución de distintos sonidos y su reconocimiento auditivo. Se hallaron resultados que muestran puntuaciones altas en el reconocimiento auditivo de los sonidos tanto en el grupo de músicos como en el de no-músicos. Por otro lado, los resultados muestran una correlación de pequeña magnitud entre ambos grupos, que resulta no ser estadísticamente significativa. Tras los resultados se pueden establecer programas potenciadores de la sensibilización tímbrica, con el fin de fomentar que la totalidad del alumnado de conservatorio alcance su máximo potencial y un alto rendimiento, ya que éstos son el reflejo de un aprendizaje más eficaz. Palabras clave: Timbre, reconocimiento auditivo, acústica violín, enseñanza musical.

The Enhanced Musical Rhythmic Perception in Second Language Learners.

Previous research suggests that mastering languages with distinct rather than similar rhythmic properties enhances musical rhythmic perception. This study investigates whether learning a second language (L2) contributes to enhanced musical rhythmic perception in general, regardless of first and second languages rhythmic properties. Additionally, we investigated whether this perceptual enhancement could be alternatively explained by exposure to musical rhythmic complexity, such as the use of compound meter in Turkish music. Finally, it investigates if an enhancement of musical rhythmic perception could be observed among L2 learners whose first language relies heavily on pitch information, as is the case with tonal languages. Therefore, we tested Turkish, Dutch and Mandarin L2 learners of English and Turkish monolinguals on their musical rhythmic perception. Participants’ phonological and working memory capacities, melodic aptitude, years of formal musical training and daily exposure to music were assessed to account for cultural and individual differences which could impact their rhythmic ability. Our results suggest that mastering a L2 rather than exposure to musical rhythmic complexity could explain individuals’ enhanced musical rhythmic perception. An even stronger enhancement of musical rhythmic perception was observed for L2 learners whose first and second languages differ regarding their rhythmic properties, as enhanced performance of Turkish in comparison with Dutch L2 learners of English seem to suggest. Such a stronger enhancement of rhythmic perception seems to be found even among L2 learners whose first language relies heavily on pitch information, as the performance of Mandarin L2 learners of English indicates. Our findings provide further support for a cognitive transfer between the language and music domain.

How musical are music video game players?

Numerous studies have shown that formal musical training is associated with sensory, motor, and cognitive advantages in individuals of various ages. However, the nature of the observed differences between musicians and nonmusicians is poorly understood, and little is known about the listening skills of individuals who engage in alternative types of everyday musical activities. Here, we show that people who have frequently played music video games outperform nonmusicians controls on a battery of music perception tests. These findings reveal that enhanced musical aptitude can be found among individuals who play music video games, raising the possibility that music video games could potentially enhance music perception skills in individuals across a broad spectrum of society who are otherwise unable to invest the time and/or money required to learn a musical instrument.

Musical Minds: Attentional blink reveals modality-specific restrictions

Background Formal musical training is known to have positive effects on attentional and executive functioning, processing speed, and working memory. Consequently, one may expect to find differences in the dynamics of temporal attention between musicians and non-musicians. Here we address the question whether that is indeed the case, and whether any beneficial effects of musical training on temporal attention are modality specific or generalize across sensory modalities. Methodology/Principal Findings When two targets are presented in close temporal succession, most people fail to report the second target, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We measured and compared AB magnitude for musicians and non-musicians using auditory or visually presented letters and digits. Relative to non-musicians, the auditory AB was both attenuated and delayed in musicians, whereas the visual AB was larger. Non-musicians with a large auditory AB tended to show a large visual AB. However, neither a positive nor negative correlation was found in musicians, suggesting that at least in musicians, attentional restrictions within each modality are completely separate. Conclusion/Significance AB magnitude within one modality can generalize to another modality, but this turns out not to be the case for every individual. Formal musical training seems to have a domain-general, but modality-specific beneficial effect on selective attention. The results fit with the idea that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB lies in modality-specific, independent sensory systems rather than a central amodal system. The findings demonstrate that individual differences in AB magnitude can provide important information about the modular structure of human cognition.

Experience Changes How Emotion in Music Is Judged: Evidence from Children Listening with Bilateral Cochlear Implants, Bimodal Devices, and Normal Hearing.

Children using unilateral cochlear implants abnormally rely on tempo rather than mode cues to distinguish whether a musical piece is happy or sad. This led us to question how this judgment is affected by the type of experience in early auditory development. We hypothesized that judgments of the emotional content of music would vary by the type and duration of access to sound in early life due to deafness, altered perception of musical cues through new ways of using auditory prostheses bilaterally, and formal music training during childhood. Seventy-five participants completed the Montreal Emotion Identification Test. Thirty-three had normal hearing (aged 6.6 to 40.0 years) and 42 children had hearing loss and used bilateral auditory prostheses (31 bilaterally implanted and 11 unilaterally implanted with contralateral hearing aid use). Reaction time and accuracy were measured. Accurate judgment of emotion in music was achieved across ages and musical experience. Musical training accentuated the reliance on mode cues which developed with age in the normal hearing group. Degrading pitch cues through cochlear implant-mediated hearing induced greater reliance on tempo cues, but mode cues grew in salience when at least partial acoustic information was available through some residual hearing in the contralateral ear. Finally, when pitch cues were experimentally distorted to represent cochlear implant hearing, individuals with normal hearing (including those with musical training) switched to an abnormal dependence on tempo cues. The data indicate that, in a western culture, access to acoustic hearing in early life promotes a preference for mode rather than tempo cues which is enhanced by musical training. The challenge to these preferred strategies during cochlear implant hearing (simulated and real), regardless of musical training, suggests that access to pitch cues for children with hearing loss must be improved by preservation of residual hearing and improvements in cochlear implant technology.

Examining the relationship between skilled music training and attention.

While many aspects of cognition have been investigated in relation to skilled music training, surprisingly little work has examined the connection between music training and attentional abilities. The present study investigated the performance of skilled musicians on cognitively demanding sustained attention tasks, measuring both temporal and visual discrimination over a prolonged duration. Participants with extensive formal music training were found to have superior performance on a temporal discrimination task, but not a visual discrimination task, compared to participants with no music training. In addition, no differences were found between groups in vigilance decrement in either type of task. Although no differences were evident in vigilance per se, the results indicate that performance in an attention-demanding temporal discrimination task was superior in individuals with extensive music training. We speculate that this basic cognitive ability may contribute to advantages that musicians show in other cognitive measures.

The effect of musical practice on gesture/sound pairing.

Learning to play a musical instrument is a demanding process requiring years of intense practice. Dramatic changes in brain connectivity, volume, and functionality have been shown in skilled musicians. It is thought that music learning involves the formation of novel audio visuomotor associations, but not much is known about the gradual acquisition of this ability. In the present study, we investigated whether formal music training enhances audiovisual multisensory processing. To this end, pupils at different stages of education were examined based on the hypothesis that the strength of audio/visuomotor associations would be augmented as a function of the number of years of conservatory study (expertise). The study participants were violin and clarinet students of pre-academic and academic levels and of different chronological ages, ages of acquisition, and academic levels. A violinist and a clarinetist each played the same score, and each participant viewed the video corresponding to his or her instrument. Pitch, intensity, rhythm, and sound duration were matched across instruments. In half of the trials, the soundtrack did not match (in pitch) the corresponding musical gestures. Data analysis indicated a correlation between the number of years of formal training (expertise) and the ability to detect an audiomotor incongruence in music performance (relative to the musical instrument practiced), thus suggesting a direct correlation between knowing how to play and perceptual sensitivity.

Everyday musical experience is sufficient to perceive the speech-to-song illusion.

Speech and song are readily differentiated from each other in everyday communication, yet sometimes listeners who have formal music training will hear a spoken utterance transform from speech to song when it is repeated (Deutsch, Henthorn, & Lapidis, 2011). It remains unclear whether music training is required to perceive this illusory transformation or whether implicit knowledge of musical structure is sufficient. The current study replicates Deutsch et al.'s findings with musicians and demonstrates the generalizability of this auditory illusion to casual music listeners with no formal training. We confirm that the illusory transformation is disrupted when the pitch height of each repetition of the utterance is transposed, and we find that raising the pitch height has a different effect on listeners' ratings than does lowering it. Auditory illusions such as this may offer unique opportunities to compare domain-specific and domain-general processing in the brain while holding acoustic characteristics constant.

Promises of formal and informal musical activities in advancing neurocognitive development throughout childhood.

Adult musicians show superior neural sound discrimination when compared to nonmusicians. However, it is unclear whether these group differences reflect the effects of experience or preexisting neural enhancement in individuals who seek out musical training. Tracking how brain function matures over time in musically trained and nontrained children can shed light on this issue. Here, we review our recent longitudinal event-related potential (ERP) studies that examine how formal musical training and less formal musical activities influence the maturation of brain responses related to sound discrimination and auditory attention. These studies found that musically trained school-aged children and preschool-aged children attending a musical playschool show more rapid maturation of neural sound discrimination than their control peers. Importantly, we found no evidence for pretraining group differences. In a related cross-sectional study, we found ERP and behavioral evidence for improved executive functions and control over auditory novelty processing in musically trained school-aged children and adolescents. Taken together, these studies provide evidence for the causal role of formal musical training and less formal musical activities in shaping the development of important neural auditory skills and suggest transfer effects with domain-general implications.

Reading and working memory in adults with or without formal musical training: Musical and lexical tone

Studies of working memory for musical tone are seldom reported, and verbal working memory experiments have not focused on the tonal aspects of a language such as Mandarin Chinese. We examined the relationships among musical experience, tonal language processing, and working memory in adult reading of musical notation and Mandarin Chinese. We hypothesized that 30 adults with formal musical training trained in translating print to sound in sight-reading would have an advantage over 30 adults without formal musical training in converting print to lexical tone in reading a tonal language. Using n-back reading tasks, we found that the adults with formal musical training were better able to extract lexical tone information from print than the adults without formal musical training, or to maintain it in working memory. Even in a Mandarin homophone task, requiring phonological judgments of print, adults with formal musical training demonstrated superior performance. We discuss possible reasons why musical experience facilitates processing of phonology and lexical tone in reading tasks.

Musical minds: attentional blink reveals modality-specific restrictions.

BackgroundFormal musical training is known to have positive effects on attentional and executive functioning, processing speed, and working memory. Consequently, one may expect to find differences in the dynamics of temporal attention between musicians and non-musicians. Here we address the question whether that is indeed the case, and whether any beneficial effects of musical training on temporal attention are modality specific or generalize across sensory modalities.Methodology/Principal FindingsWhen two targets are presented in close temporal succession, most people fail to report the second target, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We measured and compared AB magnitude for musicians and non-musicians using auditory or visually presented letters and digits. Relative to non-musicians, the auditory AB was both attenuated and delayed in musicians, whereas the visual AB was larger. Non-musicians with a large auditory AB tended to show a large visual AB. However, neither a positive nor negative correlation was found in musicians, suggesting that at least in musicians, attentional restrictions within each modality are completely separate.Conclusion/SignificanceAB magnitude within one modality can generalize to another modality, but this turns out not to be the case for every individual. Formal musical training seems to have a domain-general, but modality-specific beneficial effect on selective attention. The results fit with the idea that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB lies in modality-specific, independent sensory systems rather than a central amodal system. The findings demonstrate that individual differences in AB magnitude can provide important information about the modular structure of human cognition.

Music lessons are associated with increased verbal memory in individuals with Williams syndrome.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder characterized by intellectual delay and an affinity for music. It has been previously shown that familiar music can enhance verbal memory in individuals with WS who have had music training. There is also evidence that unfamiliar, or novel, music may also improve cognitive recall. This study was designed to examine if a novel melody could also enhance verbal memory in individuals with WS, and to more fully characterize music training in this population. We presented spoken or sung sentences that described an animal and its group name to 44 individuals with WS, and then tested their immediate and delayed memory using both recall and multiple choice formats. Those with formal music training (average duration of training 4½ years) scored significantly higher on both the spoken and sung recall items, as well as on the spoken multiple choice items, than those with no music training. Music therapy, music enjoyment, age, and Verbal IQ did not impact performance on the memory tasks. These findings provide further evidence that formal music lessons may impact the neurological pathways associated with verbal memory in individuals with WS, consistent with findings in typically developing individuals.

A developmental study of the effect of music training on timed movements.

When people clap to music, sing, play a musical instrument, or dance, they engage in temporal entrainment. We examined the effect of music training on the precision of temporal entrainment in 57 children aged 10–14 years (31 musicians, 26 non-musicians). Performance was examined for two tasks: self-paced finger tapping (discrete movements) and circle drawing (continuous movements). For each task, participants synchronized their movements with a steady pacing signal and then continued the movement at the same rate in the absence of the pacing signal. Analysis of movements during the continuation phase revealed that musicians were more accurate than non-musicians at finger tapping and, to a lesser extent, circle drawing. Performance on the finger-tapping task was positively associated with the number of years of formal music training, whereas performance on the circle-drawing task was positively associated with the age of participants. These results indicate that music training and maturation of the motor system reinforce distinct skills of timed movement.

Innovative solutions of folk music in tradition renovation

In the cultural historical experience of humankind the traditions inherited from a generation to a generation form substantial basis for development of any society. With social changes, changes in the lifestyle of a community along with changes in the concept of values, culture develops, based on the model of basic values and innovation. Folk music-making tradition is among the components characterising the culture of a given society, possessing certain specifics: most frequently it means lack of the formal musical training and inability to read notation, meaning that the music is played by ear, the age of musicians, use of folk instruments, situations of performance and repertoire. The article discusses the types of innovation and their influence on the tradition of folk-music-making, also analysing the opportunities for the restoration of the tradition in in the cultural space of the 21st century.

The Rhythm Span Task: Comparing Memory Capacity for Musical Rhythms in Musicians and Non-Musicians

The study introduces a rhythm memory task and compares performance of musicians and non-musicians. The rhythm span task with increasing and decreasing sequence length according to the participants’ performance, measures the individual memory capacity for musical rhythms. Results show that musicians perform significantly better on the rhythm span task indicating that memory capacity for rhythms is superior after many years of formal musical training. Additionally performance correlates positively with an established pitch span task (Williamson & Stewart, 2010) as well as the five dimensions of the Gold-MSI self-report questionnaire (Müllensiefen et al., 2014) evaluating musical sophistication.

Coordinated plasticity in brainstem and auditory cortex contributes to enhanced categorical speech perception in musicians.

Musicianship is associated with neuroplastic changes in brainstem and cortical structures, as well as improved acuity for behaviorally relevant sounds including speech. However, further advance in the field depends on characterizing how neuroplastic changes in brainstem and cortical speech processing relate to one another and to speech-listening behaviors. Here, we show that subcortical and cortical neural plasticity interact to yield the linguistic advantages observed with musicianship. We compared brainstem and cortical neuroelectric responses elicited by a series of vowels that differed along a categorical speech continuum in amateur musicians and non-musicians. Musicians obtained steeper identification functions and classified speech sounds more rapidly than non-musicians. Behavioral advantages coincided with more robust and temporally coherent brainstem phase-locking to salient speech cues (voice pitch and formant information) coupled with increased amplitude in cortical-evoked responses, implying an overall enhancement in the nervous system's responsiveness to speech. Musicians' subcortical and cortical neural enhancements (but not behavioral measures) were correlated with their years of formal music training. Associations between multi-level neural responses were also stronger in musically trained listeners, and were better predictors of speech perception than in non-musicians. Results suggest that musicianship modulates speech representations at multiple tiers of the auditory pathway, and strengthens the correspondence of processing between subcortical and cortical areas to allow neural activity to carry more behaviorally relevant information. We infer that musicians have a refined hierarchy of internalized representations for auditory objects at both pre-attentive and attentive levels that supplies more faithful phonemic templates to decision mechanisms governing linguistic operations.

Lifetime benefits of musical training.

Lifetime benefits of musical training.

Investigation of subjective components of overall acoustic quality using binaural recordings made in Hartford's Belding Theater

Previous research in concert hall acoustics has established correlations between listener preference for overall acoustic quality (OAQ) and a number of other subjective factors. A subjective study was conducted to determine the relative importance of several characteristics to OAQ. Subjects evaluated 18 signals based on listener envelopment, reverberance, tonal quality, and overall preference using five-point rating scales. The signals were presented individually over headphones. A total of 32 subjects with formal musical training and normal hearing were included in the study. Following a brief tutorial and training session, the test was divided into four sets, one for each of the subjective factors. All of the signals and sets were presented to each subject in a random order. The binaural recordings were made in the Belding Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. A loudspeaker on the stage played three short classical motifs that were recorded in three seat locations with two distinct settings of the hall’s variable acoustics system. The sound pressure levels of all signals were normalized to isolate the characteristics of interest. The data analysis identified relationships between the three factors and OAQ, with the most significant relationship between OAQ and tonal quality. [Work was supported by NSF Grant 1302741.]