Interindividual variability in auditory scene analysis revealed by confidence judgements

Claire Pelofi, Vincent de Gardelle, Paul Egré () and Daniel Pressnitzer ()
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Claire Pelofi: LSP - Laboratoire des systèmes perceptifs - DEC - Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Paul Egré: IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod - DEC - Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CdF (institution) - Collège de France - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Département de Philosophie - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres
Daniel Pressnitzer: LSP - Laboratoire des systèmes perceptifs - DEC - Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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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 confidence, whereas non-musicians responded with fast reaction times and maximal confidence. In a subsequent experiment, non-musicians displayed reduced confidence for the ambiguous case when pure-tone components of the Shepard complex were made easier to discern. The results suggest an effect of musical training on scene analysis: we speculate that musicians were more likely to discern components within complex auditory scenes, perhaps because of enhanced attentional resolution, and thus discovered the ambiguity. For untrained listeners, stimulus ambiguity was not available to perceptual awareness.

Keywords: Shepard tones; musical training; vagueness; ambiguity; hearing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02-19
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Published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2017, 372 (1714), ⟨10.1098/rstb.2016.0107⟩

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Working Paper: Interindividual variability in auditory scene analysis revealed by confidence judgements (2017)
Working Paper: Interindividual variability in auditory scene analysis revealed by confidence judgements (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-01478152

DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0107

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