Background: A link between musical expertise and auditory temporal processing abilities was examined.
Material and methods: Trained musicians (n=13) and non-musicians (n=12) were tested on speech tasks (phonetic identification, speech recognition in noise) and non-speech tasks (temporal gap detection).
Results: Results indicated musicians had shorter between-channel gap detection thresholds and sharper phonetic identification functions, suggesting that perceptual reorganization following musical training assists basic temporal auditory processes.
Conclusions: In general, our results provide a conceptual advance in understanding how musical training influences speech processing, an ability which, when impaired, can affect speech and reading competency.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jacek-smurzynski/140/
© Journal of Hearing Science. This document was published with permission from the editor. It was originally published in the Journal of Hearing Science.