Vasconcelos, M. 1 & Pinheiro, A. P. 2
1 Psychological Neuroscience Laboratory, Research Center in Psychology (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
2 Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
Musicians' advantages in speech processing (e.g., word learning, speech segmentation) may stem from enhanced auditory statistical learning (ASL) skills. To test this hypothesis, musicians and non-musicians were exposed to an artificial sung language stream and instructed to find out the ?alien words?. Implicit (i.e., electrophysiological data) and explicit (i.e., behavioral responses) measures were combined to examine ASL per se and its outcomes. Both electrophysiological and behavioral evidence revealed that only musicians successfully learned the sung language, suggesting musical training to positively affect ASL. However, the literature indicates that performance in ASL tasks decreases under high vs. low attentional demands and that musical training enhances auditory selective attention. Thus, we clarified whether musicians? advantage in speech segmentation persisted when ASL occurred outside the focus of attention. Participants underwent a similar experimental protocol while being told to focus their attention in a visual task and ignore the sounds. The online responses during learning and the behavioral performances in the recognition task did not differ as a function of participants? training. Together, these findings shed light on the effects of music-related neuroplasticity revealing a pivotal role of attention in the positive transfer of training from music to speech processing.