Time Tagging: A Key to Musicians' Superior Memory

Abstract

Years of formal music training and proficiency at a nonmusical skill— verbal recall—are surprisingly associated (e.g., A. R. Kilgour, L. S. Jakobson, & L. L. Cuddy, 2000). The present study proposes an indirect mechanism to account for this association. It is proposed that music training strengthens auditory temporal-order processing, and that temporalorder processing then mediates the relationship between years of music training and prose recall.