This study tested the hypothesis that the previously reported advantage of musicians over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise arises from more efficient or robust coding of periodic voiced speech, particularly in fluctuating backgrounds. Speech intelligibility was measured in listeners with extensive musical training, and in those with very little musical training or experience, usin...

The present 2 studies describe the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new instrument, the Measure of Atheist Discrimination Experiences (MADE), which may be used to examine the minority stress experiences of atheist people. Items were created from prior literature, revised by a panel of expert researchers, and assessed psychometrically. In Study 1 (N = 1,341 atheist-identified...

Absolute pitch (AP) is possessed by only a small percentage of musicians (typically < 20%). From a sample of 46 early blind subjects, we identified 21 who had musical training, 12 of whom (57.1%) reported having AP, reflecting markedly increased prevalence compared to sighted musicians, despite the fact that mean age of commencement of musical training was significantly later among blind than s...

The data described here provide standard performance measures following administration of a fingerprint matching task to expert analysts, trained students and novice control participants. Measures include accuracy on 'same' and 'different' trials, and the associated measures of sensitivity of discrimination (d') and response bias (C). In addition, speed of correct response is provided. The prov...

Autism has been associated with abnormalities in sensory and attentional processing. Here, we assessed these processes independently in the visual and auditory domains using a visual contrast-discrimination task and an auditory modulation-depth discrimination task. To evaluate changes in sensory function by attention, we measured behavioral performance (discrimination accuracy) when subjects we...