(PP1319) The Effect of Musical Experience on the Ability to Recognize Speech in the Presence of Noise

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of musical experience and masker condition on speech perception in noise ability. Speech perception in noise ability was evaluated using the AzBio sentences with six maskers. Participants were divided into musician and non-musician groups based on their musical experience. No statistically significant differences in speech perception in noise ability were found between groups across all masker conditions. A statistically significant main effect was found for masker condition. 

Summary: 

Objectives: The goal of this study was to determine the effect of musical experience and masker condition on speech perception in noise ability. This was evaluated using the AzBio sentences. We hypothesized that musicians would demonstrate better speech perception in noise performance than individuals without musical experience.  

Rationale: Slater et al (2015) studied two groups of elementary students. One group completed one year of musical training while the other had not. The musically trained group consistently outperformed the control group on the HINT conditions. Leclerc et al (2021) reported better speech perception in noise performances for college age musicians than non-musicians. Since both studies were completed using the HINT, it would be beneficial to determine if similar results are found using the AzBio speech perception in noise test. 

Design: Thirty-one native English speakers with normal pure-tone thresholds (≤ 25 dB HL, 0.25 – 4.0 kHz) participated. The mean age was 20.9 years. Participants were divided into groups, with and without musical experience. Speech perception in noise abilities were evaluated using the AzBio test (Spahr et al, 2012). The AzBio stimuli were presented at 65 dBA (0 dB SNR) and included: four-talker babble forward, four-talker babble backwards, conversational speech forward, conversational speech backwards, steady-state noise, and ten-talker babble. AzBio lists were scored on percent of correctly repeated words. The AzBio test was administered in a controlled listening environment under headphones. All sentence lists and all listening conditions were randomized. 

Results: A repeated measures MANOVA was conducted to investigate the effects of masker type and group on AzBio scores. This analysis revealed no main effect for group. The group differences ranged from -1.61 to 8.13 percentage points where positive group differences indicate better AzBio scores for musicians. The musicians performed better than non-musicians for four of the six masker conditions. A statistically significant main effect was found for masker type (p < 0.0001). The best performance was found for the steady-state noise condition (M= 78%). The poorest performance was found for the four-talker forward condition (M= 45%). The 33 percentage point performance difference between these conditions was statistically significant (p < 0.001). 

Conclusion: The results of the present study do not support the hypothesis that musicians have better speech perception in noise ability than non-musicians. This is contrary to the findings of Slater et al (2015) and Leclerc et al (2021).  However, this is consistent with the finding of Madsen et al (2017) who reported no statistically significant speech perception in noise differences between musicians and non-musicians. The difference in study results may be due to the differences in the extent of musical experience across studies.