Table 1.
Musicians' instrumental histories.
Table 2.
Group characteristics.
Figure 1.
Performance for musicians and non-musicians on speech-in-noise and backward masking tasks.
Musicians demonstrated enhanced performance for all three measures of speech-in-noise perception (QuickSIN, HINT and WIN), indicating that they were better able to hear in more challenging signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Musicians performed better (i.e., had lower thresholds) on the auditory temporal acuity test as assessed by backward masking. Error bars represent one standard error. * p<0.05 ** p<0.01.
Figure 2.
Performance for musicians and non-musicians on working memory tasks.
Musicians demonstrated significantly better auditory working memory than non-musicians, but no enhancement for visual working memory. Error bars represent one standard error. ** p<0.01.
Table 3.
Group behavioural performance.
Figure 3.
Correlations between measures of speech-in-noise perception, working memory and auditory temporal acuity.
Better performance on QuickSIN (more negative) was correlated with lower (better) auditory temporal acuity as assessed by backward masking thresholds (top: r = 0.573, p<0.005) and higher working memory ability (middle: r = −0.402, p = 0.014). Working memory and backward masking thresholds were also correlated (bottom: r = −0.495, p = 0.002).
Table 4.
Relationship between age of onset and years of practice with perceptual and cognitive measures (musicians only).
Table 5.
Relationship between years of practice with perceptual and cognitive measures (musicians only).