Understanding speech in noisy environments (SPIN) is an important everyday ability, and engaging in musical activities has been proposed as a factor that may support this ability. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying a potential musical advantage in SPIN perception remain unclear....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No immediate practice change — this mechanistic finding about auditory working memory as a mediator is scientifically informative but does not yet translate to a clinical intervention audiologists should adopt.
Identifying auditory working memory as a mediator between musicality and speech-in-noise performance opens a potential cognitive training target for improving real-world hearing outcomes.
- 01Auditory working memory statistically mediates the link between musical sophistication and speech-in-noise (SIN) perception.
- 02Published in Trends in Hearing, a peer-reviewed audiology journal.
- 03Findings suggest cognitive, not purely peripheral, mechanisms underlie musician advantages in noisy listening.
- 04Results could inform future cognitive auditory rehabilitation approaches.
- 05Study design and sample size are not specified in the abstract metadata provided.
Auditory working memory mediates the relationship between musical sophistication and speech-in-noise perception.
studysupportedMusicians' advantage in speech-in-noise perception is partly cognitive rather than purely peripheral/auditory.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42562026
- DOI
- 10.1177/23312165261476429.
- Journal
- Trends in Hearing
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Adults varying in musical sophistication and speech-in-noise perception ability
- Intervention
- Assessment of musical sophistication and auditory working memory
Primary outcomes
Auditory working memory performance; Speech-in-noise perception scores; Mediation of musical sophistication–SIN relationship by working memory