Date of Award

Fall 12-1-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Tom Johnson

Second Advisor

Ted Maldonado

Third Advisor

Liz O'Laughlin

Abstract

Inattentional deafness (ID) is a cognitive phenomenon of which we have relatively little understanding. The current study attempted to address this by considering current cognitive theories of thought and examined how musical training affects incidence rates of inattentional deafness. This study utilized a cognitive task and auditory stimuli previously designed to elicit inattentional deafness and measured musical training by administering the Goldsmith’s Musical Sophistication Index. Participants were instructed to engage in a high-load cognitive task, providing a condition in which inattentional deafness is likely to occur. During the task, a brief pure tone was presented simultaneously with the visual task display. A total of 40 participants completed the study, with 15 participants excluded due to errors in the data. Despite a lack of significance in correlations, results found that noticing an auditory change of any kind was positively associated with more musical training (r (25) = .34, p = .09). In addition, auxiliary analyses revealed differences between instrumentalists and vocalists, namely that the correlation was stronger between accurately detecting and describing the tone in vocalists than compared to instrumentalists. These findings suggest that there is an inverse relationship between musical training and experiencing inattentional deafness. Further research should focus on determining how much and what kind of musical training best protects against succumbing to ID.

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