Paper accepted in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

Be on the lookout for "Musical training is not associated with categorization of musical instrument sounds in context", which was just accepted for publication in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. Research on the so-called "musician advantage" is clear on musical training affording superior pitch perception compared to nonmusicians, but reports on perceptual benefits for timbre perception are mixed. Further, these studies have been overwhelmingly studied on musical instrument sounds presented in isolation rather than in context. Here, we tested three samples: experienced musicians (any primary instrument), experienced French horn or tenor saxophone players (matching the target instrument on each trial), and non-musicians. All three samples performed identically in terms of categorizing the target instruments in isolation and following a brief string quintet context on each trial. Therefore, musicians may only outperform nonmusicians for some auditory skills relevant to music (e.g., pitch perception) but not others (e.g., timbre perception via spectral differences).