Effects of musical experience on synchrony judgment accuracy: Taking into consideration its relation to cochlear delay

Musicians are sensitive to the synchrony of multiple tone onsets. However, even when several sounds have a simultaneous onset, their temporal relationship might not be preserved at the cochlear level because of “cochlear delays” in perception. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether cochlear delay significantly affects synchrony judgment accuracy and whether this phenomenon is dependent on musical experience. We conducted a psychoacoustic experiment to measure synchrony judgment accuracy in professional pianists, amateur pianists, amateur instrumental musicians (non-pianists), and non-musically trained people. Our experimental stimuli comprised three types of chirps, which allowed us to control for the amount of cochlear delay. We found that, regardless of the type of instrument, musicians had more accurate synchrony judgment. This may be due to the effect of careful listening, which is required as part of musical training. However, asymmetric aspects of temporal processing in the human auditory system were unaffected by musical experience.