 |
| Research article summary (published 30 Mar 2009): |
Musical expertise, bilingualism, and executive functioning.
Full Abstract
The authors investigated whether intensive musical experience leads to enhancements in executive processing, as has been shown for bilingualism. Young adults who were bilinguals, musical performers (instrumentalists or vocalists), or neither completed 3 cognitive measures and 2 executive function tasks based on conflict. Both executive function tasks included control conditions that assessed performance in the absence of conflict. All participants performed equivalently for the cognitive measures and the control conditions of the executive function tasks, but performance diverged in the conflict conditions. In a version of the Simon task involving spatial conflict between a target cue and its position, bilinguals and musicians outperformed monolinguals, replicating earlier research with bilinguals. In a version of the Stroop task involving auditory and linguistic conflict between a word and its pitch, the musicians performed better than the other participants. Instrumentalists and vocalists did not differ on any measure. Results demonstrate that extended musical experience enhances executive control on a nonverbal spatial task, as previously shown for bilingualism, but also enhances control in a more specialized auditory task, although the effect of bilingualism did not extend to that domain. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.
Author information
Author/s: Bialystok, Ellen (E); Depape, Anne-Marie (AM);
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada. ellenb(-atsign-)yorku.ca
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2009-Apr; vol 35 (issue 2) : pp 565-74
Dates: Created 2009/03/31; Completed 2009/06/04;
PMID: 19331508, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/4/2009, IMS Date: 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):
Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.
This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.
MeSH headings (categories)
This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.
Related articles
This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.
See a large map of 100+ related articles.