Reading music modifies spatial mapping in pianists.
We used a novel musical Stroop task to demonstrate that musical notation is automatically processed in trained pianists. Numbers were superimposed onto musical notes, and participants played five-note sequences by mapping from numbers to fingers instead of from notes to fingers. Pianists' reaction times were significantly affected by the congruence of the note/number pairing. Nonmusicians were unaffected. In a nonmusical analogue of the task, pianists and nonmusicians showed a qualitative difference on performance of a vertical-to-horizontal stimulus-response mapping task. Pianists were faster when stimuli specifying a leftward response were presented in vertically lower locations and stimuli specifying a rightward response were presented in vertically higher locations. Nonmusicians showed the reverse pattern. No group differences were found on a task that required horizontal-to-horizontal mappings. We suggest that, as a result of learning to read and play keyboard music, pianists acquire vertical-to-horizontal visuomotor mappings that generalize outside the musical context.
Stewart
Lauren
L
University College London, London, England. l.stewart@ucl.ac.uk
Walsh
Vincent
V
Frith
Uta
U
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013028:Space Perception