Music is similar to language in terms of working memory interference
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BRIEF REPORT
Music is similar to language in terms of working memory interference Anna Marie Fennell 1
&
Jennifer A. Bugos 2 & Brennan R. Payne 3 & Elizabeth R. Schotter 4
Accepted: 15 October 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract Some researchers theorize that musicians’ greater language ability is mediated by greater working memory because music and language share the same processing resources. Prior work using working memory sentence processing dual-task paradigms have shown that holding verbal information (e.g., words) in working memory interferes with sentence processing. In contrast, visuospatial stimuli are processed in a different working memory store and should not interfere with sentence processing. We tested whether music showed similar interference to sentence processing as opposed to noninterference like visuospatial stimuli. We also compared musicians to nonmusicians to investigate whether musical training improves verbal working memory. Findings revealed that musical stimuli produced similar working memory interference as linguistic stimuli, but visuospatial stimuli did not—suggesting that music and language rely on similar working memory resources (i.e., verbal skills) that are distinct from visuospatial skills. Musicians performed more accurately on the working memory tasks, particularly for the verbal and musical working memory stimuli, supporting an association between musicianship and greater verbal working memory capacity. Future research is necessary to evaluate the role of music training as a cognitive intervention or educational strategy to enhance reading fluency. Keywords Working memory . Music . Language . Interference
Music and language are cognitively intertwined in many ways (e.g., shared syntactic resources: Patel, 2003, 2013; auditory working memory systems: Salamé & Baddeley, 1989). Although musical training is linked with advantages in language skills in correlational (Corrigall, & Trainor, 2011; Deguchi et al., 2012; Piro, & Ortiz, 2009; Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2004; Tierney & Kraus, 2013) and interventional research (Benz, Sellaro, Hommel, & Colzato, 2016; Bhide, Power, & Goswami, 2013; Bugos & Mostafa, 2011), it is unclear which underlying cognitive mechanisms mediate these relationships. Some researchers believe working memory mediates the benefits of musicianship on reading
* Anna Marie Fennell [email protected] 1
Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W 120th St., New York, NY 10027, USA
2
School of Music, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
3
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
4
Department of Psychology , University of South Florida , FL Tampa, USA
ability (George & Coch, 2011; Suárez, Elangovan, & Au, 2016; Slevc & Okada, 2015), especially since working memory is linked to improvements in language outcomes (Caplan, 2016; Hussey et al., 2017; Payne & Stine-Morrow, 2017). We suggest that, if working memory is the link between musical tra
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