Effects of amateur choir experience on forced-attention dichotic listening in older adults

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of amateur choir experience on “forced-attention” dichotic listening performance in older adults. Twenty older adults with choir experience and 20 without such experience were recruited, along with a group of 20 younger adults as the baseline. Participants were instructed to complete the dichotic listening task based on consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in four attentional conditions, that is, non-forced, forced-left, forced-right, and divided attention conditions. The results showed that choir experience may offset age-related deficits in temporal processing, inhibitory control, and divided attention in the non-forced, forced-left, and divided attention conditions, respectively. But in the forced-right condition where the orienting process was required, two groups of older adults performed similarly, comparable with the younger group. Our findings support the OPERA-e hypothesis and underscore the effects of amateur musical activities against declines in temporal processing, inhibitory control, and divided attention in aging populations.