Hemisphere priming through practice in a musical chords task

Author(s): Wilson, P.

Journal/Book: Neuropsychologia. 1990; 28: 889-93.

Abstract: In a study of selective hemisphere activation, the performance of 30 subjects given either a "local" or "global" priming activity before and after a monoaurally presented chord analysis task was compared with an unprimed control group. The hypothesis was that ear advantage scores on the chords task would show increased left hemisphere involvement following local priming and increased right hemisphere involvement following global priming. The results failed to support this hypothesis. All subjects, however, regardless of priming condition, showed a very strong practice effect represented by a shift from a weak initial left ear (right hemisphere) advantage towards a significant right ear (left hemisphere) advantage (P less than 0.00006). The findings suggest that although the local/global priming activity did not lead to selective hemisphere activation, repeated exposure to the chords task resulted in increased use of analytic left hemisphere processing strategies as subjects became familiar with its processing requirements.

Keyword(s): Adolescence ; Adult ; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Problem Solving Arousal ; Attention ; Dominance, Cerebral; Music ; Pitch Discrimination; Practice Psychology Human; Male

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