Benefits of musical experience on whistled consonant categorization: analyzing the cognitive transfer processes

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the transfer of musical skills to speech perception by analyzing the perception and categorization of consonants produced in whistled speech, a naturally modified speech form. The study had two main objectives: (i) to explore the effects of different levels of musical skill on speech perception, and (ii) to better understand the type of skills transferred by focusing on a group of high-level musicians, playing various instruments. Within this high-level group, we aimed to disentangle general cognitive transfers from sound-specific transfers by considering instrument specialization, contrasting general musical knowledge (shared by all instruments) with instrument-specific ones. We focused on four instruments: voice, violin, piano and flute. Our results confirm a general musical advantage and suggest that only a small amount of musical experience is sufficient for musical skills to benefit whistled speech perception. However, higher-level musicians reached better performances, with differences for specific consonants. Moreover, musical expertise appears to enhance rapid adaptation to the whistled signal throughout the experiment and our results highlight the specificity of instrument expertise. Consistent with previous research showing the impact of the instrument played, the differences observed in whistled speech processing among high-level musicians seem to be primarily due to instrument-specific expertise.