Linking Tone Frequency and Modulation Discrimination to Formal Music Education: An Exploratory Study.

Discerning a difference or change in pitch varies amongst individuals. Musicians require keen pitch discrimination to tune and play their instruments or sing in tune with others. To what extent are these abilities trainable? Is there an innate element involved that might influence the outcome of suc...

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Published in:Auditory Perception & Cognition Vol. 8; no. 3; pp. 173 - 189
Main Authors: Arthur, Patricia, Zhukov, Katie
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Sep2025
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Sep2025
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      pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd
      place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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        10.1080/25742442.2025.2523225
        187780268
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        atl: Linking Tone Frequency and Modulation Discrimination to Formal Music Education: An Exploratory Study.
      aug:
        au:
          Arthur, Patricia
          Zhukov, Katie
        affil: Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
      sug:
        subj:
          Pitch Perception Evaluation
          Sound Evaluation
          Music Education
          Memory, Short Term Evaluation
          Performing Artists
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Human
          Exploratory Research
          Experimental Studies
          Comparative Studies
          Clinical Assessment Tools
          Psychophysiology
          Cognition
          Students, College
          Auditory Threshold
          Descriptive Statistics
          Data Analysis Software
          Mann-Whitney U Test
          Pearson's Correlation Coefficient
          Adolescence
          Adult
          Random Assignment
          Adolescent: 13-18 years
          Adult: 19-44 years
      ab: Discerning a difference or change in pitch varies amongst individuals. Musicians require keen pitch discrimination to tune and play their instruments or sing in tune with others. To what extent are these abilities trainable? Is there an innate element involved that might influence the outcome of such training? This study investigates links between frequency discrimination (FD), frequency modulation discrimination (FMD), working memory capacity (WMC), and formal music education in the Western art music tradition. Previous research has shown that superior FD exists in musicians when compared to that of non-musicians and may be improved with targeted training. However, FD and FMD have yet to be compared within the same group of research subjects in a controlled experimental setting. FD and FMD have also not been considered in conjunction with non-domain specific WMC, which is known to be a feature of expertise in the visual processing domain. The present exploratory study suggested a significant difference between expert and non-expert musicians in WMC. It was also found that the FMD threshold and WMC of expert pianists (experts) was significantly better than non-expert pianists (non-experts). However, in non-musicians, there was a significant negative correlation between WMC and FMD but that the musician groups were not significant but were positive. The functional role of WMC, however, remains unclear in terms of its effect on the processing of each of these individual attributes, but it is shown to vary according to expertise.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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