Markers of musical expertise in a sight-reading task: An eye-tracking study.

Classical music pianists of five different conservatory levels, from undergraduate to professional, were tested on a sight-reading task with eye-movement recording. They had to sight read both tonal classical scores that followed the rules specific to Western tonal music, and atonal contemporary scores, which do not follow these rules. This study aimed at determining the extent to which eye movements and musical performance metrics can account for the level of sight-reading expertise. First, the results indicated that with the acquisition of expertise, musicians process visual information more rapidly (increasing their played tempo while decreasing average fixation duration and their number of fixations), more structurally (tending to increase their eye-hand span), and more accurately (increasing their sight-reading accuracy). Second, when they sight read contemporary scores compared to classical scores, musicians decreased their played tempo, tended to be less accurate, increased their number of fixations, and tended to decrease their eye-hand span. Finally, expertise effects were moderated by the type of score. These results suggest (a) that visual perception is progressively shaped through music reading expertise and through domain-specific knowledge acquisition, (b) that tonal-specific cues play a significant role to use an efficient eye-movement behavior and (c) that the benefit conferred by expert prior music-specific knowledge seems to be even greater for sight-reading tonal rather than atonal scores. Our findings are discussed in the light of expert memory theories (long-term working memory theory; Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995; template theory, Gobet & Simon, 1996). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Tonal structures benefit short-term memory for real music: Evidence from non-musicians and individuals with congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of music processing, which includes impaired pitch memory, associated to abnormalities in the right fronto-temporal network. Previous research has shown that tonal structures (as defined by the Western musical system) improve short-term memory performance for short tone sequences (in comparison to atonal versions) in non-musician listeners, but the tonal structures only benefited response times in amusic individuals. We here tested the potential benefit of tonal structures for short-term memory with more complex musical material. Congenital amusics and their matched non-musician controls were required to indicate whether two excerpts were the same or different. Results confirmed impaired performance of amusic individuals in this short-term memory task. However, most importantly, both groups of participants showed better memory performance for tonal material than for atonal material. These results revealed that even amusics' impaired short-term memory for pitch shows classical characteristics of short-term memory, that is the mnemonic benefit of structure in the to-be-memorized material. The findings show that amusic individuals have acquired some implicit knowledge of regularities of their culture, allowing for implicit processing of tonal structures, which benefits to memory even for complex material.

Participation of Acoustic and Electric Hearing in Perceiving Musical Sounds.

Introduction: The objective of our study was to evaluate musical perception and its relation to the quality of life in patients with bimodal binaural auditory stimulation. Materials and Methods: Nineteen adult patients with a cochlear implant (CI) for minimum 6 months, and moderate to severe contralateral hearing loss with a hearing aid (HA), and 21 normal hearing adults were included in this prospective, cross-sectional study. Pure-tone and speech audiometry, musical test evaluating sound perception characteristics and musical listening abilities, Munich questionnaire for musical habits, and the APHAB questionnaire were recoded. Performance in musical perception test with HA, CI, and HA + CI, and potential correlations between music test, audiometry and questionnaires were investigated. Results: Bimodal stimulation improved musical perception in several features (sound brightness, roughness, and clarity) in comparison to unimodal hearing, but CI did not add to HA performances in texture, polyphony or musical emotion and even appeared to interfere negatively in pitch perception with HA. Musical perception performances (sound clarity, instrument recognition) appeared to be correlated to hearing-related quality of life (APHAB RV and EC subdomains) but not with speech performances suggesting that the exploration of musical perception complements speech understanding evaluation to better describe every-day life hearing handicap. Conclusion: Testing musical sound perception provides important information on hearing performances as a complement to speech audiometry and appears to be related to hearing-related quality of life.

Rhythmic priming of grammaticality judgments in children: Duration matters.

Research has shown that regular rhythmic primes improve grammaticality judgments of subsequently presented sentences compared with irregular rhythmic primes. In the theoretical framework of dynamic attending, regular rhythmic primes are suggested to act as driving rhythms to entrain neural oscillations. These entrained oscillations then sustain once the prime has finished, engendering a state of global enhanced activation that facilitates the processing of subsequent sentences. Up to now, this global rhythmic priming effect has largely been shown with primes that are approximately 30 s or more. To investigate whether shorter primes also facilitate grammaticality judgments, two experiments were run on two groups of children aged 7 to 9 years (Ms = 8.67 and 8.58 years, respectively). Prime durations were 8 and 16 s in Experiment 1, and they were 16 and 32 s in Experiment 2. Rhythmic priming was observed in Experiment 2 for 32-s primes, as observed previously. Furthermore, positive correlations were found between reading age and performance level after regular primes for both 8-s and 16-s primes in Experiment 1 and for 32-s primes in Experiment 2. In addition, the benefit of the regular primes increased with chronological age for the 32-s primes in Experiment 2. The findings suggest that (at least) 32-s primes are optimal in global rhythmic priming studies when testing children in the current age range and that results may be modulated by chronological age and reading age. Results are discussed in relation to dynamic attending theory, neural oscillation strength, developmental considerations, and implications for rhythmic stimulation in language rehabilitation.

Rhythmic and textural musical sequences differently influence syntax and semantic processing in children.

Effects of music on language processing have been reported separately for syntax and for semantics. Previous studies have shown that regular musical rhythms can facilitate syntax processing and that semantic features of musical excerpts can influence semantic processing of words. It remains unclear whether musical parameters, such as rhythm and sound texture, may specifically influence different components of linguistic processing. In the current study, two types of musical sequences (one focusing on rhythm and the other focusing on sound texture) were presented to children who were requested to perform a syntax or a semantic task thereafter. The results revealed that rhythmic and textural musical sequences differently influence syntax and semantic processing. For grammaticality judgments, children's performance was better after regular rhythmic sequences than after textural sound sequences. In the semantic evocation task, children produced more numerous and more various concepts after textural sound sequences than after regular rhythmic sequences. These results suggest that rhythm boosts perceptual and cognitive sequencing required in syntax processing, whereas texture promote verbalization and concept activation in verbal production. The findings have implications for the interpretation of musical priming effects and are discussed in the frameworks of dynamic attending and conceptual processing.

Regular rhythmic primes boost P600 in grammatical error processing in dyslexic adults and matched controls.

Regular musical rhythms orient attention over time and facilitate processing. Previous research has shown that regular rhythmic stimulation benefits subsequent syntax processing in children with dyslexia and specific language impairment. The present EEG study examined the influence of a rhythmic musical prime on the P600 late evoked-potential, associated with grammatical error detection for dyslexic adults and matched controls. Participants listened to regular or irregular rhythmic prime sequences followed by grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. They were required to perform grammaticality judgments for each auditorily presented sentence while EEG was recorded. In addition, tasks on syntax violation detection as well as rhythm perception and production were administered. For both participant groups, ungrammatical sentences evoked a P600 in comparison to grammatical sentences and its mean amplitude was larger after regular than irregular primes. Peak analyses of the P600 difference wave confirmed larger peak amplitudes after regular primes for both groups. They also revealed overall a later peak for dyslexic participants, particularly at posterior sites, compared to controls. Results extend rhythmic priming effects on language processing to underlying electrophysiological correlates of morpho-syntactic violation detection in dyslexic adults and matched controls. These findings are interpreted in the theoretical framework of the Dynamic Attending Theory (Jones, 1976, 2019) and the Temporal Sampling Framework for developmental disorders (Goswami, 2011).

Discrimination of tonal and atonal music in congenital amusia: The advantage of implicit tasks.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of music perception and production, which has been attributed to a major deficit in pitch processing. While most studies and diagnosis tests have used explicit investigation methods, recent studies using implicit investigation approaches have revealed some unimpaired pitch structure processing in congenital amusia. The present study investigated amusic individuals' processing of tonal structures (e.g., musical structures respecting the Western tonal system) via three different questions. Amusic participants and their matched controls judged tonal versions (original musical excerpts) and atonal versions (with manipulated pitch content to remove tonal structures) of 12 musical pieces. For each piece, participants answered three questions that required judgments from different perspectives: an explicit structural one, a personal, emotional one and a more social one (judging the perception of others). Results revealed that amusic individuals' judgments differed between tonal and atonal versions. However, the question type influenced the extent of the revealed structure processing: while amusic individuals were impaired for the question requiring explicit structural judgments, they performed as well as their matched controls for the two other questions. Together with other recent studies, these findings suggest that congenital amusia might be related to a disorder of the conscious access to music processing rather than music processing per se.

Implicit learning of nonlocal musical rules: a comment on Kuhn and Dienes (2005).

In a recent study, G. Kuhn and Z. Dienes (2005) reported that participants previously exposed to a set of musical tunes generated by a biconditional grammar subsequently preferred new tunes that respected the grammar over new ungrammatical tunes. Because the study and test tunes did not share any chunks of adjacent intervals, this result may be construed as straightforward evidence for the implicit learning of a structure that was only governed by nonlocal dependency rules. It is shown here that the grammar modified the statistical distribution of perceptually salient musical events, such as the probability that tunes covered an entire octave. When the influence of these confounds was removed, the effect of grammaticality disappeared.

The time course of emotional responses to music.

Two empirical studies investigate the time course of emotional responses to music. In the first one, musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to 27 musical excerpts and to group those that conveyed a similar emotional meaning. In one condition, the excerpts were 25 seconds long on average. In the other condition, excerpts were as short as 1 second. The groupings were then transformed into a matrix of emotional dissimilarity that was analyzed with multidimensional scaling methods (MDS). We compared the outcome of these analyses for the 25-s and 1-s duration conditions. In the second study, we presented musical excerpts of increasing duration, varying from 250 to 20 seconds. Participants were requested to evaluate on a subjective scale how "moving" each excerpt was. On the basis of the responses given for the longer duration, excerpts were then sorted into two groups: highly moving and weakly (or less) moving. The main purpose of the analysis was to identify the point in time where these two categories of excerpts started to be differentiated by participants. Both studies provide consistent findings that less than 1 s of music is enough to instill elaborated emotional responses in listeners.