Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences

Working memory and musical competence of musicians and non-musicians

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaperJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Musical ability has been found to be associated with an enhancement of verbal working memory. In this study, we investigated whether this effect would generalize to visual-spatial working memory as would be expected if the effect were driven by general intelligence. We administered the WAIS-III Digit Span; the WMS-III Spatial Span; and the Musical Ear Test (MET), a forced-choice same/different listening task measuring musical ability, to non-musicians, amateur musicians, and expert musicians. Expert musicians significantly outperformed non-musicians on the Digit Span. Additionally, Digit Span Forward scores were found to be correlated with MET total scores and with scores on the rhythm subtest of the MET. No between-group differences were found on the Spatial Span.
Original languageEnglish
JournalPsychology of Music
Volume41
Issue6
Pages (from-to)779-793
ISSN0305-7356
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

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