Sex Differences in Music: A Female Advantage at Recognizing Familiar Melodies.

ABSTRACT: Although sex differences have been observed in various cognitive domains, there has been little work examining sex differences in the cognition of music. We tested the prediction that women would be better than men at recognizing familiar melodies, since memories of specific melodies are likely to be learned (at least in part) by declarative memory, which shows female advantages. Participants were 24 men and 24 women, with half musicians and half non-musicians in each group. The two groups were matched on age, education, and various measures of musical training. Participants were presented with well-known and novel melodies, and were asked to indicate their recognition of familiar melodies as rapidly as possible. The women were significantly faster than the men in responding, with a large

SUBMITTER: Miles SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4771742 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature