Musical Feature Perception: A Comparative Study Among Musicians, Dancers, and Non-musicians,

Abstract

Music and dance are two art forms that depend on musical components to produce an output. The training usually starts at a young age, and the skills are fine-tuned through rigorous practice. Longterm musical or dance training has been associated with enhancements in various sensorimotor domains compared to non-trained laypeople. However, few studies have directly compared musicians’ and dancers’ performances for musical perception tasks. In the present study, we administered Mini- PROMS on 152 participants comprising formally trained musicians, dancers, and nonmusicians/ dancers and recorded their performance in subtests of melody, tuning, tempo, and accent discrimination. The total score was computed as a composite of scores from the subtests. The results revealed a significant advantage for musicians only in the task of melody discrimination and not for other subtests or total scores. We also observed that the performances of a subgroup of nonmusicians were at par with musicians and dancers to be identical in the total scores. Dancers performed at par with musicians in untrained domains like accent. The findings suggest that cultural factors and innateness influence music perception. In addition, long-term musical and dance training leads to distinct enhancements in non-trained domains, hinting at a trans-modality transfer of skills.