Enduring musician advantage among former musicians in prosodic pitch perception

Abstract

Musical training has been associated with various cognitive benefits, one of which is enhanced speech perception. However, most findings have been based on musicians taking part in ongoing music lessons and practice. This study thus sought to determine whether the musician advantage in pitch perception in the language domain extends to individuals who have ceased musical training and practice. To this end, adult active musicians (n = 22), former musicians (n = 27), and non-musicians (n = 47) were presented with sentences spoken in a native language, English, and a foreign language, French. The final words of the sentences were either prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height), weakly incongruous (pitch was increased by 25%), or strongly incongruous (pitch was increased by 110%). Results of the pitch discrimination task revealed that although active musicians outperformed former musicians, former musicians outperformed non-musicians in the weakly incongruous condition. The findings suggest that the musician advantage in pitch perception in speech is retained to some extent even after musical training and practice is discontinued.

Full text

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Enduring musician advantage
among former musicians
in prosodic pitch perception
Xin Ru Toh
1, Shen Hui Tan
1, Galston Wong
2, Fun Lau
1 & Francis C. K. Wong 1*
Musical training has been associated with various cognitive benets, one of which is enhanced speech
perception. However, most ndings have been based on musicians taking part in ongoing music
lessons and practice. This study thus sought to determine whether the musician advantage in pitch
perception in the language domain extends to individuals who have ceased musical training and
practice. To this end, adult active musicians (n = 22), former musicians (n = 27), and non-musicians
(n = 47) were presented with sentences spoken in a native language, English, and a foreign language,
French. The nal words of the sentences were either prosodically congruous (spoken at normal
pitch height), weakly incongruous (pitch was increased by 25%), or strongly incongruous (pitch was
increased by 110%). Results of the pitch discrimination task revealed that although active musicians
outperformed former musicians, former musicians outperformed non-musicians in the weakly
incongruous condition. The ndings suggest that the musician advantage in pitch perception in speech
is retained to some extent even after musical training and practice is discontinued.
Musical training has been associated with various cognitive enhancements1, making it an attractive enrich-
ment and intervention activity. In the language domain, one notable nding is that musical training is linked
to an advantage in speech perception. For instance, musicians are better than non-musicians at perceiving
speech in noisy conditions even in older adulthood2,3. In particular, a vast amount of literature has documented
positive music-to-language cross-domain transfer eects in pitch processing, which undergirds Patel’s OPERA
hypothesis4. e OPERA hypothesis describes how musical training benets the neural encoding of speech when
ve requirements are satised: there is an overlap in the brain networks employed to process an acoustic feature
common to music and speech; the processing of the shared acoustic feature occurs at higher precision in music
than in speech; and the musical activities evoke strong positive emotion, have frequent repetition, and encompass
focused attention. e OPERA hypothesis may account for the superior pitch processing abilities in speech seen
in musically trained individuals, as pitch is a basic acoustic property found in both music and speech. While pitch
dierences are used to form melodies in music, they are used to convey contrastive meaning via lexical tones,
stress, and intonation in speech. To augment the OPERA hypothesis, this study seeks to explicate whether the
musician advantage persists in former musicians who have ceased musical training and practice.
e OPERA hypothesis is well supported by empirical studies comparing musicians and non-musicians. Stud-
ies have found that among individuals with no tone language experience, musicians outperform non-musicians
in lexical tone perception5–15. In addition, musicians without tone language experience show enhanced brainstem
and cortical encoding when listening to lexical tones14,16,17. Yet, it is uncertain whether the musician advantage
in lexical tone perception also exists among tone language speakers. It was previously found that for English or
French speakers, musicians outperform non-musicians in Cantonese tone discrimination, whereas for Cantonese
speakers, musicians and non-musicians both show ceiling eects18. On the other hand, it was also found that
Cantonese musicians outperform Cantonese non-musicians in the discrimination and identication of merging
Cantonese tone pairs, especially the most dicult Tone 2/Tone 5 contrast19. More recently, Toh etal.20 found that
even among speakers of a tone language, those who have received musical training outperform non-musicians
in non-native lexical tone perception. Apart from lexical tone perception, studies have found that among indi-
viduals with no tone language experience, musicians are better than non-musicians at perceiving stress, which is
indicated by a combination of pitch, duration, and intensity variations21,22. However, it remains unclear whether
the musician advantage in stress perception also applies to tone language speakers. Among English speakers,
musicians outperform non-musicians in English stress perception, while Cantonese-English bilingual musicians
OPEN
1Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
Singapore. 2School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA. *email:
franciswong@ntu.edu.sg
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and non-musicians perform equally well23. Tone language experience has been linked to enhanced pitch percep-
tion abilities in speech6,24–30. As such, one possible explanation for the conicting ndings is that the musician
advantage for pitch perception in speech applies across speakers irrespective of language background, but the
more subtle eect among tone language speakers is likely to be masked by ceiling-like performance in tasks that
are not suciently sensitive.
Besides lexical tones and stress, another aspect in which there is mounting evidence for the musician advan-
tage is prosody. A series of studies have consistently found that musicians outperform non-musicians in detecting
pitch contour expectancy violations31–35. is research paradigm, rst created by Schön etal.31, is designed by
manipulating the fundamental frequency of either the nal notes of musical phrases or nal words of linguistic
phrases. In particular, the weakly incongruous condition entails a small pitch change which is dicult to detect,
and hence evaluates pitch perception in a more ne-grained manner. rough both behavioural and electrophysi-
ological measures, they found that adult musicians detected these pitch variations better than non-musicians
in not only music but also their native language, thereby lending support for a domain-general pitch processing
mechanism. is nding was reinforced in follow-up cross-sectional and longitudinal studies32,33, in which they
found similar group dierences among 8-year-old children, despite the fact that the children musicians received
a shorter duration of musical training than the adult musicians in the original study. eir nding was also
expanded in follow-up studies introducing unfamiliar language contexts34,35, in which they found that partici-
pants across groups found it more dicult to detect pitch changes in a non-native language or pseudolanguage
than in their native language. e researchers posited that understanding the semantic content and being familiar
with intonational contours in sentences might help with anticipating and detecting pitch changes in one’s native
language. at said, the researchers found that musicians held an advantage over non-musicians in detecting
prosodic pitch violations across native and non-native language contexts. Moreover, behavioural studies have
found that musicians outperform non-musicians in matching spoken utterances to their intonation melodies36
and identifying emotional prosody in speech37–39. Interestingly, similar results were seen in a longitudinal study
with 6-year-old children, with those who were randomly assigned to receive 1year of musical training in the
form of keyboard or vocal lessons outperforming those who received no lessons when tested on the identica-
tion of emotional prosody in speech37. Collectively, these studies substantiate the notion that musical training
facilitates speech perception at not only the segmental but also supra-segmental level.
Furthermore, neurological studies suggest that musical training is linked to structural and functional dif-
ferences in the brain40–50. Notably, the eects of musical training on brain development seem to be causal in
nature33,45–47. For instance, Hyde etal.46,47 randomly assigned 6-year-old children without any behavioural or
brain dierences in pre-tests to receive either 15months of musical training or no training. ey found that only
those who received musical training showed structural brain changes in motor and auditory areas which were
correlated with behavioural improvements on melodic and rhythmic discrimination tests. ese studies suggest
that there may be musical training-induced brain plasticity eects that could potentially translate to long-lasting
cognitive impacts. While the data on ageing and musicianship remains scant, there is emerging evidence that
an age-related decline in auditory perception may be mitigated by musical training among lifelong musicians
who maintain regular musical practice. Older and younger adult musicians outperform non-musicians in vari-
ous auditory processing abilities, such as detecting speech-in-noise and mistuned harmonics, assessed using
neurophysiological and behavioural measures51–53.
In light of the above ndings, musical training does appear to facilitate speech perception, providing empiri-
cal evidence for the OPERA hypothesis4. A critical question to consider is whether the OPERA hypothesis can
be extended to former musicians. Studies on the eects of musical training typically characterise musicians as
individuals with ≥ 6years of musical training and ongoing instrumental practice for ≥ 1h a week54. However,
such professional musicians may not represent the general population in which many individuals who take
up music lessons in childhood eventually do not commit to it55,56. Although there has been extensive research
on professional active musicians, more research needs to be done with individuals who choose not to pursue
musicianship professionally but nonetheless have had some musical experience. Of particular interest is whether
cognitive benets such as in speech perception persist even aer musical training and practice is discontinued.
Qualifying the extent of the inuence of musical training among individuals who have undergone music attri-
tion will serve to not only provide insight on the generalisability of the OPERA hypothesis, but also inform the
eectiveness of musical training as a means of improving cognitive and linguistic abilities in the long-term, as
well as protecting against age-related cognitive decline.
As noted by Costa-Giomi56, few studies to date have investigated whether cognitive advantages exist in the
long term aer musical training and practice is discontinued. Costa-Giomi and Ryan58 (as cited in Costa-Giomi57)
conducted a longitudinal study in which children in the experimental group received 3years of piano lessons.
Seven years aer musical training was discontinued, the researchers found no dierences in IQ or memory
between the adults who had and had not received childhood musical training, suggesting that musical training
does not result in permanent cognitive benets. Nevertheless, the researchers postulated that the lack of long-
lasting cognitive improvements may have been due to low attendance and time spent practising the musical
instrument55,58. In contrast, two behavioural studies found improved performance in various cognitive tasks
such as IQ59 and executive functions60 in adulthood even aer musical training and practice had ceased, sug-
gesting that musical training has long-term benets and contributes to the establishment of a cognitive reserve.
However, the measures used in these behavioural studies have focused on general cognitive abilities rather than
speech perception abilities specically.
In terms of auditory perception, two brain imaging studies havefound that musical training in early child-
hood provide sustained enhanced neural processing of auditory stimuli in adulthood aer musical training and
practice had ceased. Skoe and Kraus61 found that young adults who had received musical training in childhood
showed more robust signal-to-noise ratio brainstem responses to pure tones, as compared to non-musicians.
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White-Schwoch etal.62 found that older adults with a greater number of years of musical training in childhood
or young adulthood showed faster neural timing in response to consonant–vowel transitions in speech syllables
presented in quiet and noise, compared to older adults with fewer number of years of musical training or no
musical training at all. Although these two brain imaging studies suggest that music-related neuroplasticity is
maintained even aer music attrition, studies have yet to investigate if these neural traces translate to a clear
behavioural advantage in acoustic processing of speech stimuli. is is a critical research gap that the present
study aims to bridge.
In sum, although the literature has generally established that professional musicians have an advantage over
non-musicians in pitch perception abilities in the language domain, it remains inconclusive whether this musi-
cian advantage would also be observed behaviourally among individuals who have ceased musical training and
practice. at being the case, the overarching aim of our study is to add to the OPERA hypothesis and elucidate
whether a potential music-to-language transfer eect exists among former musicians. To this end, our study
compared active musicians, former musicians, and non-musicians in their ability to perform a well-replicated
experimental task—detecting linguistic prosodic pitch violations.
Although there has been a burgeoning number of studies revolving around various types of pitch percep-
tion in speech, such as lexical tones and stress, we were theoretically motivated to focus on prosody for several
reasons. Firstly, prosody is oen described as “the music of speech”63, thereby making it an obvious candidate for
the present study on music-to-language transfer. Patel himself has called attention to the fact that both melody
in music and prosody in speech rely primarily on the same acoustic parameter of pitch contour, with the former
necessitating more precise acoustic processing than the latter64. is overlap in neural resources has been dem-
onstrated in the studies outlined above, in which musicians tend to surpass non-musicians in prosodic pitch
perception. On top of that, Patel and other researchers have shown that individuals on the other end of the spec-
trum with a musical disorder known as amusia exhibit decits in perceiving speech prosody64–67. Accordingly,
speech prosody is of exceptional relevance to the OPERA hypothesis. Secondly, unlike lexical tones which are
only of pertinence to tone languages, speech prosody is an important aspect of all languages, thereby making it a
universal topic of interest with great practical signicance. Broadly speaking, prosody signals speaker intention
and meaning, imparting crucial information pertaining to syntax and pragmatics68. Research on rst language
acquisition has found that prosodic sensitivity is related to literacy skills69, reading comprehension70,71, and speech
comprehension72–74. In a similar vein, research on second language acquisition in children and adults has found
that prosodic sensitivity might facilitate the learning of word order and new vocabulary75,76, while exposure to
prosodic features of the target language apparently improves second language prociency and uency77,78. e
ndings yielded from this study will therefore have important pedagogical implications for language and literacy
skills as well as foreign language learning.
In order to study prosodic pitch perception, we chose to adopt the well-replicated prosodic pitch contour
expectancy violation task, as it has consistently demonstrated the musician advantage in dierent age groups and
languages with robust ndings. Given that previous studies revealed a trend in which participants, regardless of
musicianship, showed superior performance in detecting prosodic pitch violations in a familiar language rela-
tive to an unfamiliar language34,35, two dierent language contexts were implemented in the present study. We
included a non-native language context in part to help circumvent a problem we anticipated; namely, that tasks
using native language stimuli might not be adequately sensitive to tease apart group dierences18,23, especially for
tone language speakers. Furthermore, by introducing both native and non-native language contexts, we hoped
to examine music-to-language transfer eects both with and without the top-down inuence from other types
of linguistic processing, allowing us to better assess the generalisability of the eects. Finally, the two language
contexts mirror rst language competence and second language learning respectively, shedding light on the
practical application of the enduring music-to-language transfer eects in former musicians, if any.
Method
Participants. Participants were recruited to take part in the study via an online screening questionnaire.
ey were between 19 and 42years old (M = 23.04, SD = 3.90), with normal hearing based on an audiometric test
(25dB HL for octave frequencies from 500 to 4000Hz). All of the participants were either native Singaporeans
or had lived in Singapore for at least 10years to ensure that they were familiar with the local accented variety of
English. ey had no formal exposure to the French language, the non-native speech stimuli used in this study.
A total of 127 individuals participated in this study. Data from 31 participants was excluded due to the fol-
lowing cases: (a) participants with self-reported exposure to French (n = 8); (b) participants who had between
2and 6years of musical training experience (n = 23).
e nal dataset consisted of 96 participants. ey were classied into three groups based on information
obtained from a self-report questionnaire on their language and music background. In this study, active musi-
cians consisted of those who had had at least 6years of musical training and were still currently maintaining
a consistent practice schedule of at least 3h per week in the past 2years (n = 22). On the other hand, former
musicians referred to those who similarly had at least 6years of musical training but had stopped maintaining a
regular practice schedule for at least 2years (n = 27). Finally, non-musicians referred to those who had had less
than 2years of musical training (n = 47). ose with musical training predominantly had experience in string,
wind, and vocal musical training. None of the participants were musicians by profession. Reecting the diver-
sity of multilingualism in the local population, the majority of the participants were procient in English and
Mandarin Chinese (n = 86), while several were procient in English and a second language other than Mandarin
Chinese, specically Malay (n = 3), Tamil (n = 5), Tagalog (n = 1), and Burmese (n = 1). e representation of
non-Mandarin Chinese speakers was similar across groups, χ2(2) = 2.355, p = 0.308.
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To validate the grouping, participants’ general musical abilities were assessed using the Musical Ear Test
(MET)79. e MET consisted of two components: the melody subtest and the rhythm subtest. For each subtest,
participants listened to 52 pairs of phrases, and had to judge whether the second phrase was the “same” or “dif-
ferent” compared to the rst phrase. Half of the trials were “same” trials and the other half were “dierent” trials.
e “dierent” trials involved a pitch violation in the melody subtest and a rhythmic change in the rhythm subtest.
e MET stimuli were delivered via headphones, and participants gave their responses on an accompanying
answer sheet. All participants completed the melody subtest followed by the rhythm subtest. Table1 shows the
nal sample and descriptive information of each participant group.
Materials and procedures
e research procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Nanyang Technological Univer-
sity. All research methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. Written
informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their legal guardians before participation.
Aer providing their written informed consent, participants were seated comfortably in a soundproof booth,
and undertook two experimental tasks. Firstly, the participants completed a two-choice speech pitch discrimi-
nation task. e English and French language blocks were counterbalanced across participants, with half of the
participants presented with the English set rst, and the other half with the French set rst. Secondly, the partici-
pants completed a general musical abilities test, i.e., the MET. Short breaks were given between tasks to prevent
fatigue. e total length of time for participation was approximately 1h, and the participants were monetarily
compensated for their time upon successful completion of the experiment.
Participants’ linguistic perception abilities were assessed using a pitch violation discrimination task that has
been well-replicated in the literature31–35. For the pitch discrimination task, 40 spoken declarative sentences in
English and French respectively were recorded to form the experimental speech stimuli (see Supplementary
Tables1 and 2). e sentences were compiled and modied from a combination of sources, including the Har-
vard Sentences database80 for the English stimuli and Smith’s paper81 for the French stimuli, with the nal word
in each sentence being disyllabic as in Marques etal.’s study34. Two female speakers, one native in Singapore
English and the other in French, voiced the English and French sentences respectively at a normal speaking rate.
e recorded sentences were then digitised (sampling at 44.1kHz and 16 bit) using Audacity® Version 2.0.5.082.
For each language, there were three dierent auditory conditions, and 40 sentences were presented in each
auditory condition, thus leading to a total of 120 sentences. e nal word of each sentence was either prosodi-
cally congruous, weakly incongruous, or strongly incongruous. In the prosodically incongruous conditions, the
pitch (F0) of the nal words was increased using Praat83, such that there was a local pitch manipulation on the
nal words (+ 25% in the weakly incongruous condition, + 110% in the strongly incongruous condition) while
maintaining the original natural global pitch contour (Fig.1). e pitch increases used in the present study dier
from those used in past studies (+ 35% in the weakly incongruous condition, + 120% in the strongly incongru-
ous condition)31–35. Preliminary pilot testing using conventional pitch increase values revealed a ceiling eect
among our Singaporean participants, likely because enhanced pitch perception abilities in speech have been
associated with bilingualism84 and tone language experience6,24–30. As such, we reduced the pitch incongruity
Table 1. Participant group demographics. Mean values and standard deviations (in parentheses) are given
for age, musical background, and musical abilities. For the group dierences on musical abilities, one-way
ANOVA and pairwise comparisons are Bonferroni corrected.
Participant group Group dierences on musical
abilities (MET scores) as revealed
by one-way ANOVAActive musicians (AM) Former musicians (FM) Non-musicians (NM)
N 22 27 47 N/A
Age 21.45 (2.87) 23.07 (3.93) 23.77 (4.13) N/A
No. of years of musical training 11.00 (3.80) 9.37 (3.12) 0.09 (0.28)
F(2,93) = 202.564, p < 0.001
AM > NM (p < 0.001)
AM = FM (p = 0.069)
FM > NM (p < 0.001)
No. of practice hours per week within
the past two years 5.91 (2.51) 0.70 (0.77) N/A N/A
No. of years since musical training
was discontinued 0.09 (0.29) 5.26 (3.44) N/A N/A
MET melody (%) 85.58 (7.43) 77.99 (7.92) 69.23 (7.38)
F(2,93) = 37.299, p < 0.001
AM > NM (p < 0.001)
AM > FM (p = 0.002)
FM > NM (p < 0.001)
MET rhythm (%) 78.76 (7.93) 73.29 (7.77) 66.98 (9.49)
F(2,93) = 14.579, p < 0.001
AM > NM (p < 0.001)
AM = FM (p = 0.093)
FM > NM (p = 0.010)
Language background 20 English-Mandarin bilingual
1 English-Malay bilingual
1 English-Tagalog bilingual
26 English-Mandarin bilingual
1 English-Tamil bilingual
40 English-Mandarin bilingual
2 English-Malay bilingual
4 English-Tamil bilingual
1 English-Burmese bilingual
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in order to increase the diculty of the task, and preliminary pilot testing using our modied pitch increase
values obtained pitch discrimination accuracy rates across the experimental conditions which were similar to
those found by Marques etal.34.
Participants listened to the speech stimuli via headphones. ey were briefed that they would be listening
to either English or French sentences, and that comprehension of the sentences was not required. In each trial,
participants were asked to judge whether the nal word of each sentence sounded normal (congruous condition)
or strange (weakly incongruous or strongly incongruous conditions). Responses were recorded via a keyboard
press, “N” or “S” respectively. Participants were asked to provide a response within 3s. e practice phase
consisted of 6 trials, with feedback provided at the end of each trial to indicate if the participants had answered
correctly. e experimental phase consisted of 120 trials, broken up into four blocks of 30 sentences each. Sen-
tence blocks were counterbalanced across participants; half of the participants in each group heard blocks one
and two rst, while the other half heard blocks three and four rst. Sentences from each experimental condition
occurred equally frequently within each block and in pseudorandom order. Up to three consecutive “strange”
trials were allowed within each block, while pitch-manipulated variants of the same sentence were not allowed
to occur within the same block.
Results
A 2
×
3
×
3 mixed ANOVA was conducted with pitch discrimination accuracy as the dependent variable, language
(native vs. non-native) and prosodic congruity (congruous vs. weakly incongruous vs. strongly incongruous)
as the within-subject factors, and music group (active musicians vs. former musicians vs. non-musicians) as
the between-subject factor. As Mauchly’s Test indicated that the assumption of sphericity had been violated
for the prosodic congruity eect, χ2(2) = 242.497, p < 0.001, and the language by prosodic congruity eect,
χ2(2) = 153.767, p < 0.001, Greenhouse–Geisser correction was applied, ε = 0.519 and ε = 0.552 respectively. As
Box’s M Test indicated that the assumption of equality of covariance had been violated, Box’s M = 249.251,
F = 5.307, p < 0.001, Pillai’s Trace was used. For all pairwise comparisons, Bonferroni correction was applied.
The interaction effect between prosodic congruity and music group was statistically significant,
F(2.074,96.456) = 10.124, p < 0.001 (Fig.2). e main source of the interaction eect as revealed by simple eect
analyses was from the weakly incongruous condition, F(2,93) = 13.877, p < 0.001; the mean pitch discrimination
accuracy was signicantly dierent between active musicians (68%), former musicians (54%), and non-musicians
(42%). Pairwise comparisons revealed that active musicians outperformed former musicians (p = 0.034) and
non-musicians (p < 0.001), while former musicians also outperformed non-musicians (p = 0.042).
e eect of music group was signicant for the strongly incongruous condition, F(2,93) = 3.293, p = 0.042; the
mean pitch discrimination accuracy was signicantly dierent between active musicians (99%), former musicians
(98%), and non-musicians (96%). However, pairwise comparisons revealed no signicant dierences between
groups aer Bonferroni correction. Active musicians did not dier from non-musicians (p = 0.060), and former
musicians diered from neither active musicians (p = 1.000) nor non-musicians (p = 0.257). Meanwhile. the eect
of music group was not signicant for the congruous condition, F(2,93) = 0.767, p = 0.467.
e three-way interaction between language and prosodic congruity and music group was not signi-
cant, F(2.207,102.648) = 0.335, p = 0.737; neither was the interaction between language and music group,
F(2.000,93.000) = 0.615, p = 0.543.
There was also a significant interaction effect between language and prosodic congruity,
F(1.104,102.648) = 39.450, p < 0.001 (Fig.3). e eect of language was signicant for the weakly incongruous
condition, F(1.000,93.000) = 63.833, p < 0.001, where participants showed higher pitch discrimination accuracy
Figure1. Fundamental frequency (F0 in Hz) for a sample sentence in the three prosodic conditions.
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in their native language English (66%) than in their non-native language French (43%). e eect of language
was also signicant for the congruous condition, F(1.000,93.000) = 8.816, p = 0.004, where participants showed
higher pitch discrimination accuracy in their native language English (98%) than in their non-native language
French (95%). However, the eect of language was not signicant for the strongly incongruous condition,
F(1.000,93.000) = 0.008, p = 0.931).
Signicant main eects were found for language, F(1.000,93.000) = 85.129, p < 0.001, prosodic congruity,
F(1.037,96.456 = 376.582, p < 0.001, and music group, F(2,93) = 14.275, p < 0.001. Participants showed higher pitch
discrimination accuracy in their native language English (87%) than in their non-native language French (79%).
e weakly incongruous condition (52%) was the most dicult to detect compared to the congruous condition
(96%) and strongly incongruous condition (97%). Active musicians (88%) and former musicians (83%) showed
higher pitch discrimination accuracy compared to non-musicians (78%).
Figure2. Pitch discrimination accuracy of active musicians, former musicians, and non-musicians in the three
prosodic conditions. Error bars denote standard error. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
Figure3. Pitch discrimination accuracy for the native language English and non-native language French in the
three prosodic conditions. Error bars denote standard error. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
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Discussion
e present study is one of the rst to ascertain whether individuals who have discontinued musical training
and practice retain a behavioural advantage over non-musicians in pitch perception abilities in speech. Our key
nding is that there was a signicant interaction eect between prosodic congruity and music group. In the
weakly incongruous condition where pitch deviations were small and dicult to detect, our results showed a
stepwise progression in pitch discrimination accuracy, with active musicians having better performance than
former musicians, who in turn had better performance than non-musicians.
Our nding of an advantage by musicians over non-musicians in pitch discrimination echoes past ndings
that musical training facilitates pitch perception in the language domain5–23,31–39, thereby pointing towards a com-
mon domain-general pitch processing mechanism in music and speech perception as described in the OPERA
hypothesis4. Our nding also coheres with ndings of long-lasting neural changes from past musical training in
young adults61 and older adults62, as well as ndings of improved cognitive performance in adulthood even aer
ceasing musical training59,60. Taken together, it appears that former musicians share similar neural enhancement
as active musicians, and that the sharpened neural processing translates to perceptual benets behaviourally.
One explanation is that musical training requires individuals to attend to subtle sound contrasts, such as in pitch
and duration. Consequently, musicians become more sensitive to such subtle acoustic cues, which has a positive
spillover eect when discriminating similar contrasts in speech. Musical training contributes to the establish-
ment of cognitive enhancement, such that there are some enduring cross-domain transfer benets of musical
training on the discrimination of subtle speech contrasts even aer musical training and practice is discontinued.
More importantly, our nding that former musicians diered from active musicians qualies the extent of the
positive music-to-language transfer eects. Drawing on previous studies showing a clear behavioural advantage
held by adult musicians over non-musicians in a pitch contour violation task similar to that used in the present
study31,34, it appears that former musicians retain some musician advantage, but that such advantage may fade
over time aer musical training and practice is discontinued. Parallel results were seen in the data from the
musical abilities tests. ere were signicant group dierences in MET melody scores (Table1), where active
musicians had better musical abilities than former musicians, and former musicians in turn had better musical
abilities than non-musicians. e dierence in pitch discrimination and musical abilities between active musi-
cians and former musicians cannot be attributed to the length of musical training, which was similar for the two
groups as seen in the pairwise comparison (Table1). erefore, our data suggests that music attrition in pitch
perception manifests in both the music and language domains among former musicians. One possible explana-
tion is that subtle acoustic cues may no longer be behaviourally relevant in former musicians’ everyday auditory
environment, such that positive music-to-language transfer benets may diminish over time. is interpretation
is corroborated by exploratory Pearson correlations conducted to assess the relationship between the number
of years since discontinuing musical practice and other factors. As reported in the Supplementary Results,
in the sample of musicians both active and former, the number of years since discontinuing musical practice
was signicantly negatively correlated with pitch discrimination accuracy for the weakly incongruous prosodic
condition in the native language English and non-native language French (see Supplementary Figs.1 and 2), as
well as with MET melody and rhythm subtest performance. e longer the period since discontinuing musical
training and practice, the poorer one is at discriminating subtle violations in speech and music, indicating that
there might be a gradual attenuation in ner acoustic discrimination abilities among former musicians. Future
research can be conducted with older adults as participants, including former musicians who have discontinued
musical training and practice for a longer period, to examine the issue further.
We also found a signicant main eect for language and a signicant interaction eect between language
and prosodic congruity. Apart from a native language context with multiple possible sources of information that
might assist in pitch processing, we implemented a non-native language context without additional information
for participants to rely on. e interaction eect revealed that in both the congruous and weakly incongruous
conditions, participants were more accurate in prosodic pitch discrimination in their native language than in a
non-native language, consistent with previous ndings by Marques etal.34 and Deguchi etal.35. ere are two
possible explanations for this native language advantage, which Deguchi etal.35 investigated by introducing jab-
berwocky sentences that preserved the intonational contours of the native language but consisted of meaningless
legal pseudowords. ey found that participants were better at detecting pitch changes in their native language
than in jabberwocky, but were also better at detecting pitch changes in jabberwocky than in the non-native lan-
guage. is suggests that participants were familiar with typical intonational contours in their native language,
and were consequently better able to detect pitch changes in the native language and jabberwocky speech stimuli
but not in the non-native language speech stimuli. At the same time, participants could understand the mean-
ing of their native language, and for that reason were better able to anticipate when the nal word carrying the
pitch variation would occur in the native language speech stimuli but not in the jabberwocky and non-native
language speech stimuli. e native language advantage observed in our study can thus be explained by the fact
that participants were making use of both prosodic and semantic information to complete the pitch incongruity
detection task. Nonetheless, regardless of the language used for the speech stimuli, group dierences were seen
in the weakly incongruous condition. Active and former musicians were more accurate than non-musicians in
detecting prosodic pitch violation no matter whether they had prior knowledge of the language tested. In the
non-native language context which better isolated the prosodic pitch dimension without inuence from other
types of linguistic processing, participants would not have been able to exploit additional top-down processing
frameworks and would have been relying solely on bottom-up pitch perceptual sensitivity to acoustic cues. In
the native language context, group dierences were also seen despite the fact that all participants were able to
draw on additional linguistic resources. e present study hence extends the OPERA hypothesis4 by underscor-
ing that—presumably due to their prior musical training with melodic pitch patterns—former musicians retain
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enhanced underlying pitch processing abilities, which generalise to the perception of prosodic pitch contours
in speech for both native and non-native languages.
A caveat to keep in mind, though, is that although there is a large body of evidence in which musicians—be it
active and former—outperform non-musicians in various pitch perception tasks, it may not be straightforward
to conclude that the so-called musician advantage is a result of musical training. It is plausible that the results
reported in this present study may be driven by a third, unexplored factor, such as general intelligence, educa-
tion background, or socioeconomic status. On top of that, as with most of the previously reported literature, this
present study adopted a cross-sectional design comparing dierent population groups at a specic point in time.
In recent years, some researchers have propounded the idea that inherent musical abilities, rather than musical
training, might be linked to enhanced speech perception30,85,86. Ergo, the music-to-language transfer eects that
we speak of may be a consequence of pre-existing dierences and self-selection, as opposed to a consequence
of musical training per se. In other words, individuals pre-disposed with superior auditory or pitch processing
abilities to begin with may be more inclined to pick up and continue musical training, such that the dierences
observed between active, former, and non-musicians later in life may not be a direct outcome of musical train-
ing in and of itself.
However, as highlighted in the introduction, there is some compelling evidence in the existing literature that
musical training has a causal inuence on brain development and pitch perception. Participants initially matched
in musical aptitude, general intelligence, and socioeconomic status have been shown to demonstrate group dif-
ferences in neurological and behavioural post-tests related to pitch perception depending on the training they
are randomly assigned to33,45–47. Of particular relevance to our study, Moreno etal.33 conducted a longitudinal
experimental study with 8-year-old children without any prior musical training. Pre-tests conrmed that the
children were initially matched in pitch perception performance, general cognitive abilities, as well as socio-
economic status. ese children were then randomly assigned to receive 6months of either musical training
or painting training. e researchers recorded both electrophysiological and behavioural measures for a pitch
violation discrimination task similar to that used in this present study. ey found that children who received
musical training, but not those who received painting training, showed improved prosodic pitch discrimina-
tion abilities in speech. Along the same lines, Nan etal.45 randomly assigned 4- to 5-year-old children with
tone language experience to receive 6months of piano training, reading training, or no training. Although the
children were initially matched in general cognitive abilities and socioeconomic status, and although all groups
showed improvements in general cognitive abilities, only those who received piano training showed enhanced
cortical responses to pitch changes in music and speech which were correlated with behavioural performance.
ese ndings suggest that musical training can indeed cause experience-dependent transfer eects that cannot
be attributed to external factors or pre-existing dierences, while our study further suggests that some transfer
eects may be retained even aer musical training and practice is discontinued. Having said that, future research
can strengthen our nding by performing an intervention study with longitudinal randomised controlled trials
to track and compare the eects of long-term, short-term, and no musical training among individuals who are
otherwise matched on other variables.
In conclusion, our study shows that musical training confers positive cross-domain benets in speech per-
ception, adding to the body of literature on music-to-language transfer and suggesting that there is a common
pitch processing mechanism underlying pitch perception in the two domains. More importantly, our results
further show that these benets may be retained to some extent over time, such that former musicians show
some behavioural advantage over non-musicians even aer the discontinuation of musical training and practice.
Situated within the OPERA hypothesis4, it appears that musical training alters the shared neural networks for
music and speech in a long-lasting manner, such that the musician advantage applies not only to active musicians
but to former musicians as well. Moreover, this advantage in prosodic pitch perception is seen with both native
and non-native languages. Possible future directions for research include using neurological and behavioural
measures to compare active musicians, former musicians, and non-musicians’ pitch perception abilities in the
language domain in other areas such as the perception of lexical tones, stress, and emotional prosody. Our nd-
ings have real-life implications for boosting rst language acquisition and foreign language learning, as well as
protecting against age-related cognitive and auditory decline in the ageing population. It appears that musical
training and practice can serve as an eective enrichment activity and intervention method to improve speech
perception, and that individuals can reap some long-lasting cognitive benets throughout their lifespan even
aer musical training and practice is discontinued.
Data availability
e dataset generated during and/or analysed during the current study is included in the Supplementary Infor-
mation le.
Received: 19 September 2022; Accepted: 9 February 2023
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Acknowledgements
is study was supported by research grants from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore (MOE2019-
SSRTG-016, MOE-T2EP402A20-0003). We thank Dr. Alice H. D. Chan for her insight on the design of the study.
We are also grateful to all participants for their contribution to the study.
Author contributions
S.T. and G.W. contributed to the conception, design, and implementation of the study. X.T., S.T., G.W., F.L.,
and F.W. performed the statistical analysis and interpreted the data. X.T., S.T., and G.W. wrote dras of the
manuscript. X.T., F.L., and F.W. revised and nalised the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the
submitted manuscript.
Additional information
Supplementary Information e online version contains supplementary material available at https:// doi. org/
10. 1038/ s41598- 023- 29733-3.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to F.C.K.W.
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