TY - JOUR
T1 - Learning and retention of novel words in musicians and nonmusicians
AU - Stewart, Elizabeth C.
AU - Pittman, Andrea L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Student Research Grant in Audiology from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation, awarded to the first author. Many thanks to the staff of the Pediatric Amplification Lab and to the study participants for their time and cooperation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether long-term musical training enhances the ability to perceive and learn new auditory information. Listeners with extensive musical experience were expected to detect, learn, and retain novel words more effectively than participants without musical training. Advantages of musical training were expected to be greater for words learned in multitalker babble compared to quiet. Method: Participants consisted of 20 young adult musicians and 20 age-matched nonmusicians, all with normal hearing. In addition to completing word recognition and nonword detection tasks, each participant learned 10 novel words in a rapid word-learning paradigm. All tasks were completed in quiet and in multitalker babble. Next-day retention of the learned words was examined in isolation (recall) and in the context of continuous discourse (detection). Performance was compared across groups and listening conditions. Results: Performance was significantly poorer in babble than in quiet on word recognition and nonword detection, but not on word learning, learned-word recall, or learned-word detection. No differences were observed between groups (musicians vs. nonmusicians) on any of the tasks. Conclusions: For young normal-hearing adults, auditory experience resulting from long-term music training did not enhance their learning of new auditory information in either favorable (quiet) or unfavorable (babble) listening conditions. This suggests that the formation of semantic and musical representations in memory may be supported by the same underlying auditory processes, such that musical training is simply an extension of an auditory expertise that both musicians and nonmusicians possess.
AB - Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether long-term musical training enhances the ability to perceive and learn new auditory information. Listeners with extensive musical experience were expected to detect, learn, and retain novel words more effectively than participants without musical training. Advantages of musical training were expected to be greater for words learned in multitalker babble compared to quiet. Method: Participants consisted of 20 young adult musicians and 20 age-matched nonmusicians, all with normal hearing. In addition to completing word recognition and nonword detection tasks, each participant learned 10 novel words in a rapid word-learning paradigm. All tasks were completed in quiet and in multitalker babble. Next-day retention of the learned words was examined in isolation (recall) and in the context of continuous discourse (detection). Performance was compared across groups and listening conditions. Results: Performance was significantly poorer in babble than in quiet on word recognition and nonword detection, but not on word learning, learned-word recall, or learned-word detection. No differences were observed between groups (musicians vs. nonmusicians) on any of the tasks. Conclusions: For young normal-hearing adults, auditory experience resulting from long-term music training did not enhance their learning of new auditory information in either favorable (quiet) or unfavorable (babble) listening conditions. This suggests that the formation of semantic and musical representations in memory may be supported by the same underlying auditory processes, such that musical training is simply an extension of an auditory expertise that both musicians and nonmusicians possess.
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U2 - 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00482
DO - 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00482
M3 - Article
C2 - 34185549
AN - SCOPUS:85110500046
VL - 64
SP - 2870
EP - 2884
JO - Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
JF - Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
SN - 1092-4388
IS - 7
ER -