The Effect of Musical Training and Working Memory in Adverse Listening Situations

Speech-in-noise (SIN) perception is essential for everyday communication. In most communication situations, the listener requires the ability to process simultaneous complex auditory signals to understand the target speech or target sound. As the listening situation becomes more difficult, the ability to distinguish between speech and noise becomes dependent on recruiting additional cognitive resources, such as working memory (WM). Previous studies have explored correlations between WM and SIN perception in musicians and nonmusicians, with mixed findings. However, no study to date has examined the speech perception abilities of musicians and nonmusicians with similar WM capacity. The objectives of this study were to investigate (1) whether musical experience results in improved listening in adverse listening situations, and (2) whether the benefit of musical experience can be separated from the effect of greater WM capacity.

Forty-nine young musicians and nonmusicians were assigned to subgroups of high versus low WM, based on the performance on the backward digit span test. To investigate the effects of music training and WM on SIN perception, performance was assessed on clinical tests of speech perception in background noise. Listening effort (LE) was assessed in a dual-task paradigm and via self-report. We hypothesized that musicians would have an advantage when listening to SIN, at least in terms of reduced LE.

There was no statistically significant difference between musicians and nonmusicians, and no significant interaction between music training and WM on any of the outcome measures used in this study. However, a significant effect of WM on SIN ability was found on both the Quick Speech-In-Noise test (QuickSIN) and the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) tests.

The results of this experiment suggest that music training does not provide an advantage in adverse listening situations either in terms of improved speech understanding or reduced LE. While musicians have been shown to have heightened basic auditory abilities, the effect on SIN performance may be more subtle. Our results also show that regardless of prior music training, listeners with high WM capacity are able to perform significantly better on speech-in-noise tasks.