A note on interactions of ears, hands and cerebral hemisperes in a musical performance task requiring bimanual coordination

Music perception and cerebral asymmetries

Six experiments investigated the detection of pitch, rhythm and harmony changes in music perception. While RTs did not differentiate between ears for detecting a changed note in either a single line melody or a five note whole tone sequence, the right ear was more accurate. The left ear was faster, and the right more accurate in detecting rhythm changes in a five note sequence. The ears did not differ in detecting harmony changes. Finally, the right ear proved consistently more sensitive (d') in recognizing excerpts from unfamiliar melodies, and except only for female nonmusicians, the left ear was more sensitive for familiar melodies. If the adoption of differintial listening strategies determines the direction of laterality differences such as these, then familiarity also seems important in determining listening strategies.