Faster maturation of selective attention in musically trained children and adolescents: Converging behavioral and event?related potential evidence

Previous work suggests that musical training in childhood is associated with enhanced executive functions. However, it unknown whether this advantage extends to selective attention—another central aspect of control. We recorded a well-established event-related potential (ERP) marker distraction, the P3a, during an audio-visual task investigate maturation attention musically trained children and adolescents aged 10–17 years control group untrained peers. The required categorization visual stimuli, while sequence standard sounds distracting novel were presented background. music outperformed younger showed smaller P3a than their peers group. Also, negative response elicited by N1/MMN time range (~150–200 ms) was These results indicate less easily distracted task-irrelevant sound stimulation gated neural processing more efficiently Furthermore, we replicated our previous finding that, relative group, performed faster standardized tests for inhibition set shifting. provide converging behavioral electrophysiological evidence from cross-modal paradigm accelerated corroborate association between