Musical ability and emotion recognition in speech prosody: The role of pitch discrimination.

ABSTRACT: Why does musical expertise predict enhanced emotion recognition in speech prosody? Evidence for a causal role of music training is weak, and correlations with musical aptitude could reflect basic auditory abilities rather than musicality per se. Here, we tested whether individual differences in basic auditory discrimination account for the music-prosody association. A total of 164 adults completed forced-choice judgments of emotions in prosody and facial expressions, self-reports of musical experience, objective tests of musical ability (melody and rhythm perception), and adaptive psychoacoustic tasks that estimated discrimination thresholds for pitch, duration, loudness, timbre, and backward masking. Both music training and musical ability correlated with better recognition of prosodic bu

SUBMITTER: Balde AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12948796 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature