Re: musical training and pitch resolution

["Robert J. Zatorre" <robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List

Here is a good recent study with some very clear empirical data 
pertaining to this issue. I love a good anecdote as well as the next 
guy, but nothing beats good clean data!!

cheers

Robert

************

Hear Res. 2006 Jul 11; [Epub ahead of print]


Influence of musical and psychoacoustical training on pitch discrimination.

Micheyl C, Delhommeau K, Perrot X, Oxenham AJ.

MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, 50 Vassar Street, Bldg 36-758, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA.

This study compared the influence of musical and psychoacoustical 
training on auditory pitch discrimination abilities. In a first 
experiment, pitch discrimination thresholds for pure and complex tones 
were measured in 30 classical musicians and 30 non-musicians, none of 
whom had prior psychoacoustical training. The non-musicians' mean 
thresholds were more than six times larger than those of the classical 
musicians initially, and still about four times larger after 2h of 
training using an adaptive two-interval forced-choice procedure; this 
difference is two to three times larger than suggested by previous 
studies. The musicians' thresholds were close to those measured in 
earlier psychoacoustical studies using highly trained listeners, and 
showed little improvement with training; this suggests that classical 
musical training can lead to optimal or nearly optimal pitch 
discrimination performance. A second experiment was performed to 
determine how much additional training was required for the 
non-musicians to obtain thresholds as low as those of the classical 
musicians from experiment 1. Eight new non-musicians with no prior 
training practiced the frequency discrimination task for a total of 14h. 
It took between 4 and 8h of training for their thresholds to become as 
small as those measured in the classical musicians from experiment 1. 
These findings supplement and qualify earlier data in the literature 
regarding the respective influence of musical and psychoacoustical 
training on pitch discrimination performance.