Music Reading Expertise Selectively Improves Categorical Judgment with Musical Notation

Different domains of perceptual expertise often lead to different hemispheric engagement (e.g. Kanwisher et al., 1997). Recent work suggests that the neural substrates engaged in musical reading are shifted from left hemisphere novice processing to bilateral processing in experts (Wong & Gauthier, 2010). To relate this shift to behavior, we tested whether music-reading training improves categorical and coordinate perceptual judgments, which are argued to rely on the left and right hemisphere respectively (Kosslyn et al., 1989). Music-reading experts and novices judged whether two sequentially presented music sequences were identical. The notes were either on a staff (categorical) or without a staff (coordinate) in either trained or untrained (90° rotated) orientations. Experts performed better than novices for categorical judgments, and the advantage was larger for the trained than untrained orientation. The two groups performed similarly for coordinate judgments. Music-reading fluency predicted performance in categorical judgments in the trained orientation in experts, while it predicted performance in all conditions in novices. This suggests that music-reading training selectively improves categorical judgments in the trained orientation, while music-reading ability in novices reflects general perceptual ability with notes. Future studies will clarify how these findings are related to the hemispheric shift in music-reading expertise.