Interindividual variability in auditory scene analysis revealed by confidence judgements.

ABSTRACT: Because musicians are trained to discern sounds within complex acoustic scenes, such as an orchestra playing, it has been hypothesized that musicianship improves general auditory scene analysis abilities. Here, we compared musicians and non-musicians in a behavioural paradigm using ambiguous stimuli, combining performance, reaction times and confidence measures. We used 'Shepard tones', for which listeners may report either an upward or a downward pitch shift for the same ambiguous tone pair. Musicians and non-musicians performed similarly on the pitch-shift direction task. In particular, both groups were at chance for the ambiguous case. However, groups differed in their reaction times and judgements of confidence. Musicians responded to the ambiguous case with long reaction times and low

SUBMITTER: Pelofi C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5206275 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature