Influence of auditory working memory in discriminating children with good musical abilities from children with poor musical abilities

Abstract

Abstract Purpose: Musical abilities are associated with the perception of complex acoustic features in an auditory scene, which requires a good load of cognitive processing. Musical sleepers (individuals with good musical abilities without formal music training) were proven to be in adults, and their enhanced cognitive abilities were established, but such a phenomenon in children is not explored yet. Hence, the present study was carried out to assess auditory working memory (AWM) abilities in children with widespread musical abilities. Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine children within the age range of 7–13 years participated in the study. The children’s musical abilities were assessed using the Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Musical Abilities and scores were recorded. Sixteen and thirteen children were categorized into individuals with good and poor musical abilities, respectively, based on the 50th percentile score as the cutoff. The tests for AWM, such as forward span, backward span, and N-back, were administered. Results: Point biserial correlation showed that groups had a significant positive association with forward span (r = 0.65; P = 0.00), backward span test (r = 0.41; P = 0.02), and N-back test (r = 0.70; P = 0.00). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated a significant main effect of groups, and post hoc analysis showed that children with good musical abilities outperformed the ones with poor musical abilities in all three working memory measures. Further, Fisher’s discriminant analysis revealed that the N-back test, with discriminant coefficient of 0.75, is the best auditory-cognitive predictor of musical abilities in children. Conclusions: Children who had no musical training exhibited better musical ability. This may be mediated by improved AWM, but an additional investigation into the relationship between musical aptitude and other psychophysical abilities in children without musical training is necessary.