Browsing by Author "Ojala, Pauliina"

Recent studies have shown that early and intensive exposure to music correlates with the development of auditory processes. In this research, 130 children between the ages of 7-13 were studied every two years in order to explore the effects of musical training on pre-attentive auditory processes. These data are part of a comprehensive longitudinal study started in 2003. In order to assess automatic and memory-related brain processes, auditory evoked potentials were recorded with electroencephalography (EEG). The focus was on two particular components: the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a. The MMN component is assumed to reflect early detection of change in a sequence of repeating sounds and thus relates to early pre-attentive auditory skills. The P3a component is related to involuntary attention switch towards auditory changes. Both components can be elicited during passive tasks in which participants are not explicitly attending to auditory stimuli. The development of pre-attentive auditory skills was studied with two different paradigms. Basic auditory processing was investigated in a paradigm that included changes in five different sound features (the Multi-feature paradigm). This paradigm is of special value when studying children since it allows shorter measurement times than the traditional MMN paradigms. The detection of more musical sound changes was examined in an oddball paradigm with minor chords as deviants and major chords as standards (the Chord paradigm). The results show that pre-attentive auditory discrimination skills develop faster among children with musical training than control children. This was revealed by differences in both MMN- and P3a-components particularly in the Chord-paradigm. The amplitude of the MMN-components was found to increase with age under nearly all conditions in both groups. These results give new and valuable information about the development of attention and discrimination skills of different sound features in childhood. The findings also highlight the significance of musical training in enhancing the development of auditory abilities in school-aged children. This study is of special value due to extensive amount of data, long-term follow-up and the innovative paradigms.