We sought to establish norms and correlates for the Musical Ear Test (MET), an objective
test of musical ability. A large sample of undergraduates at a Canadian university (N> 500) …

Speech-in-noise perception, the ability to hear a relevant voice within a noisy background, is
important for successful communication. Musicians have been reported to perform better …

Plasticity from auditory experience shapes the brain's encoding and perception of sound.
However, whether such long-term plasticity alters the trajectory of short-term plasticity during …

Music exists in almost every society, has universal acoustic features, and is processed by
distinct neural circuits in humans even with no experience of musical training. However, it …

One of the main reasons for studying a foreign language is communicating with others, but
many students do not feel confidently enough when trying to develop their speaking skills …

Music training is widely assumed to enhance several nonmusical abilities, including speech
perception, executive functions, reading, and emotion recognition. This assumption is based …

The “cocktail party” problem—how a listener perceives speech in noisy environments—is
typically studied using speech (multi-talker babble) or noise maskers. However, realistic …

Musical training enhances auditory-motor cortex coupling, which in turn facilitates music and
speech perception. How tightly the temporal processing of music and speech are intertwined …

Previous studies have reported better speech-in-noise (SIN) recognition in musicians
relative to nonmusicians while others have failed to observe this “musician SIN advantage.” …

Two separate lines of research have examined the influence of song and infant-directed
speech (IDS—a speech register that includes some melodic features) on language learning …