Differential advantages of musical backgrounds on binaural integration and interaction skills in instrumentalists, vocalists, and non-musicians

BACKGROUND: Musical perception requires a host of skills. Instrumental musicians place greater emphasis on motor coordination, whereas vocal musicians rehearse vocal sounds. The study explored the differential advantages of musical background on binaural integration and interaction in musicians (instrumentalists, vocalists) and compared them with age-matched non-musicians. METHODS: Eight six participants aged 20–40 y with normal hearing sensitivity were subjected to binaural tests using a standard group comparison research design. The participants were segregated into three groups – Group 1 included instrumentalists (n = 26, mean age: 17.73 ± 2.83 y), while Group 2 and Group 3 consisted of vocalists (n = 30, mean age: 19.30 ± 2.47 y) and non-musicians (n = 30, mean age: 18.20 ± 3.02 y) respectively. The binaural processes namely integration (Dichotic syllable test, DST; and virtual acoustic space identification - VASI) and interaction (Interaural difference thresholds for time and level: ITD & ILD), were administered on all the participants. RESULTS: Statistical analyses showed the main effect of musicianship. Bonferroni pair-wise test revealed that the musicians (instrumentalists and vocalists) outperformed (p < 0.05) non-musicians in all the tests. The differential advantage of the musical background was seen on the binaural integration test with instrumentalists performing better in the VASI test compared to vocalists, and vice-versa for DST. No difference was observed in interaction tasks (ITD & ILD) between vocalists and instrumentalists (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Musical background-induced differential advantages can be reasonably noted in the binaural skills of instrumentalists and vocalists (compared to non-musicians).