Musical training affects the representation of speech Free

Musicians are more sensitive to acoustic features such as onset timing and frequency (Levitin, 2006). Musical training may enhance the processing of acoustic information for speech sounds as musicians have a more accurate temporal and tonal representation of auditory stimuli than their non-musician counterparts (Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010; Parbery-Clark et al., 2009; Zendel & Alain, 2008). These studies suggest that musical training may enhance the processing of acoustic information for speech sounds. In the current study, we hypothesized that musical training would enhance speech perception and discrimination in musicians by engaging perceptual and attentional mechanisms more typically associated with music processing. Here, we performed a perceptual behavioral experiment using speech stimuli differing in voice onset and presented in a dichotic listening task paradigm to address whether musical training improves phonemic discrimination. Subjects either indicated aural location for a specified speech sound or identified a specific speech sound from a directed aural location. Musical training effects were reflected by diminished performance in specific perceptual conditions. We believe these results may reflect a decreased sensitivity to temporally based acoustic features of speech due to musical training on specific instruments and an indirect translation of musical cues into functional linguistic cues.