Statistical learning and auditory processing in adults and children with music training: a behavioural and ERP study

Empirical thesis.At foot of title page: Department of Linguistics (Audiology section), The HEARing CRC & ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Musicians' edge : a comparison of auditory processing, cognitive abilities and statistical learning -- Chapter 3. Musicians' online performance during auditory and visual statistical learning tasks -- Chapter 4. Investigation of statistical learning and auditory processing in children with music training -- Chapter 5. Individual differences in the ability to perceive speech in noise are related to the capacity for statistical learning -- Chapter 6. Chapter summaries -- Chapter 7. General discussion -- Appendices.Background: Statistical learning (SL) ability helps individuals to extract probabilistic regularities from input without conscious awareness. There is debate in the literature about whether musical expertise is linked with performance on SL tasks. This thesis investigated the association between musical training and a variety of auditory and cognitive tasks including SL.Methods: Data from 40 adults (17 musicians) and 50 children (25 musically trained) were collected. Over the course of 4 experiments, auditory and cognitive measurements, as well as behavioural and online electrophysiological assessments of both auditory and visual SL were obtained in this population. SL was evaluated using the embedded triplet paradigm. Auditory processing measures such as frequency discrimination, dichotic listening tasks and cognitive measures such as the digit span task, sustained attention were also evaluated. In children, a measure of musical abilities was also obtained.Results: Experiments showed significantly better auditory SL in individuals with musictraining. However, individuals with music training did not outperform the control group in visual SL task. Similar results were observed even in children with musical training who have had at least 1.5 years of music training after controlling for socio-economic status, parents' education background across the groups. Musically trained adults and children outperformed their untrained counterparts as they showed distinct responses (larger responses for initial stimulus of the triplets) in the online auditory SL task. Importantly, experiments showed that performance on SL tasks was independent of auditory and cognitive processing measures. Additionally, individual differences in musical abilities were related to the capacity for SL in children. The use of electrophysiological indices such as N1 and N400 as online measures of SL in the two modalities is discussed.Conclusions: The findings add to the growing literature on the nature of association of music training and other skills such as SL, auditory and cognitive processing skills.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 234 pages) diagrams, graphs, table

The Musical advantage : professional musicians have enhanced auditory processing skills

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Role of statistical learning in understanding speech perception in noise in musicians

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The Evaluation of pitch percept using iterated rippled noise : an event related potentials study

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Musicians' edge : a comparison of auditory processing, cognitive abilities and statistical learning

It has been hypothesized that musical expertise is associated with enhanced auditory processing and cognitive abilities. Recent research has examined the relationship between musicians' advantage and implicit statistical learning skills. In the present study, we assessed a variety of auditory processing skills, cognitive processing skills, and statistical learning (auditory and visual forms) in age-matched musicians (N = 17) and non-musicians (N = 18). Musicians had significantly better performance than non-musicians on frequency discrimination, and backward digit span. A key finding was that musicians had better auditory, but not visual, statistical learning than non-musicians. Performance on the statistical learning tasks was not correlated with performance on auditory and cognitive measures. Musicians’ superior performance on auditory (but not visual) statistical learning suggests that musical expertise is associated with an enhanced ability to detect statistical regularities in auditory stimuli.12 page(s

Musicians’ online performance during auditory and visual statistical learning tasks

Musicians’ brains are considered to be a functional model of neuroplasticity due to the structural and functional changes associated with long-term musical training. In this study, we examined implicit extraction of statistical regularities from a continuous stream of stimuli—statistical learning (SL). We investigated whether long-term musical training is associated with better extraction of statistical cues in an auditory SL (aSL) task and a visual SL (vSL) task—both using the embedded triplet paradigm. Online measures, characterized by event related potentials (ERPs), were recorded during a familiarization phase while participants were exposed to a continuous stream of individually presented pure tones in the aSL task or individually presented cartoon figures in the vSL task. Unbeknown to participants, the stream was composed of triplets. Musicians showed advantages when compared to non-musicians in the online measure (early N1 and N400 triplet onset effects) during the aSL task. However, there were no differences between musicians and non-musicians for the vSL task. Results from the current study show that musical training is associated with enhancements in extraction of statistical cues only in the auditory domain.12 page(s