Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Musical Training Influences Auditory Temporal Processing, Saravanan Elangovan, Nicole Payne, Jacek Smurzynski, Marc A. Fagelson

ETSU Faculty Works

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.