JSLHR
Research Article
Learning and Retention of Novel Words
in Musicians and Nonmusicians
Elizabeth C. Stewarta
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine
whether long-term musical training enhances the ability to
perceive and learn new auditory information. Listeners with
extensive musical experience were expected to detect,
learn, and retain novel words more effectively than participants
without musical training. Advantages of musical training were
expected to be greater for words learned in multitalker babble
compared to quiet.
Method: Participants consisted of 20 young adult musicians
and 20 age-matched nonmusicians, all with normal
hearing. In addition to completing word recognition and
nonword detection tasks, each participant learned 10 novel
words in a rapid word-learning paradigm. All tasks were
completed in quiet and in multitalker babble. Next-day
retention of the learned words was examined in isolation
(recall) and in the context of continuous discourse (detection).
A
fundamental component of word learning is as-
certaining the meaning of the word. According to
Bloom (2000), knowing the meaning of a word
requires (a) having a mental representation or concept that the
word symbolizes and (b) mapping that concept onto the correct
linguistic form (i.e., unit of speech capable of carrying
meaning, such as a morpheme, word, or phrase). The
most observable type of word learning occurs through
direct instruction. In early childhood, this takes the form
of ostensive naming—that is, labeling targets in the child’s
environment. A limitation of this approach is the problem
of generalization: The child must have a way to take a
word that was learned in one situation and apply it appro-
priately in a new situation. Another method of direct in-
struction leading to word learning, typically beginning in
about the fourth grade, is the memorization of vocabulary
a
Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State
University, Tempe
Correspondence to Elizabeth C. Stewart:
Elizabeth.Stewart@sonova.com
Editor-in-Chief: Frederick (Erick) Gallun
Editor: Yi Shen
Received August 16, 2020
Revision received December 30, 2020
Accepted March 12, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00482
2870 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021 • Copyright © 2021 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
and Andrea L. Pittmana
Performance was compared across groups and listening
conditions.
Results: Performance was significantly poorer in babble
than in quiet on word recognition and nonword detection,
but not on word learning, learned-word recall, or learned-
word detection. No differences were observed between
groups (musicians vs. nonmusicians) on any of the tasks.
Conclusions: For young normal-hearing adults, auditory
experience resulting from long-term music training did not
enhance their learning of new auditory information in either
favorable (quiet) or unfavorable (babble) listening conditions.
This suggests that the formation of semantic and musical
representations in memory may be supported by the same
underlying auditory processes, such that musical training
is simply an extension of an auditory expertise that both
musicians and nonmusicians possess.
lists. This approach requires substantial effort on the part
of both the learner and the instructor, as it usually in-
volves careful explanation of definitions and repeated
practice. Thus, learning words well enough to recognize
them easily and use them correctly takes a considerable
amount of time using this method. In fact, it is estimated
that children learn only 100–200 words this way over the
course of a school year (Miller & Gildea, 1987). Thus, there
must be another source of word learning that accounts for
the majority of the 60,000-word vocabulary of the average
high school graduate (e.g., Pinker, 1994).
There is convincing evidence that most words are ac-
quired through incidental exposure during verbal commu-
nication (Bloom, 2000; Sternberg, 1987). Sternberg and
Powell (1983) proposed a model of contextual learning
comprising three components: (a) knowledge acquisition
processes, (b) contextual cues, and (c) moderating variables.
This model assumes that information relevant to learning a
new word is rarely presented in isolation; rather, it is often
embedded in a background of information, not all of which
is necessary for acquiring the meaning of the novel word.
Knowledge acquisition processes consist of examining all
of the available information and identifying that which is
critical for understanding the word’s meaning and filtering
Disclosure: The authors have declared that no competing interests existed at the time
of publication.
out irrelevant data (selective encoding), taking the relevant
pieces of information and combining them into a cohesive
unit (selective combination), and then evaluating the new in-
formation to determine how it relates to existing knowledge
(selective comparison). In short, novel information is selected,
integrated, and examined to arrive at word meaning.
Knowledge acquisition processes operate on a set of
cues that are drawn from the context in which the new
words occur. These contextual cues can help to establish
the meaning of an unknown word by providing informa-
tion about the word’s physical properties (such as its size,
shape, or color), function, class membership, and so forth.
Moderating variables dictate the degree to which the con-
textual cues facilitate word learning and can include the
number of times the unknown word is encountered; the
variability of contexts in which the word appears over mul-
tiple occurrences; or how critical the word is to comprehen-
sion of the phrase, sentence, or passage in which it appears
(Sternberg & Powell, 1983).
In this study, the hypothesis that musical training
moderates the learning and retention of new information
was tested. Central to this hypothesis is the assumption
that the benefit of musical training extends to nonmusical
disciplines. This assumption is supported by the theory of
positive transfer, which proposes that a concept or skill
learned in one context can be applied in a similar context to
improve performance (Perkins & Salomon, 1992). Besson
et al. (2011) have suggested that a boost in perceptual acu-
ity in one domain following long-term sensory experience
in another domain serves as evidence of a transfer of train-
ing. This assertion is based on findings that certain brain
structures function similarly when processing language and
music (Besson et al., 2011). For example, results of a func-
tional magnetic resonance imaging study on young adult
nonmusicians showed increased activation in a neuronal
network that included portions of Broca’s and Wernicke’s
areas for musical chord sequences containing dissonant
tone clusters, compared to those containing in-key chords
(Koelsch et al., 2002). Because the involvement of these
areas in language processing is well established, this study
appears to demonstrate an overlap in the representation of
linguistic and musical syntax in the brain (Patel, 2008).
To explore the question of whether experience with
music learning transfers to language learning specifically,
Dittinger et al. (2016, 2017, 2019) completed a set of stud-
ies using a novel word learning paradigm involving word–
picture associations presented in a quiet listening environ-
ment. This paradigm included a word-learning phase, in
which natural Thai monosyllabic words were presented,
along with pictures of familiar objects 20 times each, to
allow participants (nonspeakers of Thai) to learn the word–
picture associations. Following the word-learning phase,
participants were presented with the same pictures and were
asked to indicate whether the auditorily presented word that
followed matched or mismatched the picture based on the
learned word–picture associations. These studies revealed
that young adults and children with musical training expe-
rience made fewer errors on the matching task compared
to their nonmusician peers (Dittinger et al., 2017, 2019).
Additionally, young adult musicians were able to recall
the word–picture associations significantly more accurately
than nonmusicians when the matching task was repeated
5 months after novel words were first learned (Dittinger
et al., 2016). The outcomes of these studies suggest that
music training may indeed enhance word learning. There
is a body of evidence, discussed in the section that follows,
that provides examples of perceptual and cognitive skills
that music training has been shown to enhance. Given the
importance of these skills for auditory learning, the evi-
dence that follows further supports the hypothesis that mu-
sical training enhances novel word learning.
Advantages of Music Training for Perception
and Cognition
One of the variables moderating context-driven word
learning is the importance of the unknown word to the phrase
in which it is embedded, as this will determine how critical it
is to decipher the meaning of the word (Sternberg & Powell,
1983). One way to assess a novel word’s significance in a
sentence is through prosodic cues such as stress, which is
often used to draw attention to key words. Prosodic infor-
mation, such as stress and intonation, is carried by pitch con-
tour (i.e., pattern of changes in pitch) in speech, whereas
pitch contour in music conveys melody (Chandrasekaran
& Kraus, 2010). Musicians have demonstrated an advan-
tage for detecting pitch changes in both music and speech.
For example, Schön et al. (2004) found that young adult
musicians were better than their nonmusician peers at de-
tecting subtle incongruities in pitch within melodies and
in spoken sentences, suggesting that musical training pro-
vides an advantage for the perception of pitch contour in
both music and spoken language. Thus, musical experience
may enhance sensitivity to prosodic cues, allowing the lis-
tener to determine the importance of a novel word relative
to the overall meaning of the sentence in which it appears.
When the pitch of two distinct sounds is identical, ac-
curate detection of timbre helps listeners discriminate be-
tween them (Kraus et al., 2009). In speech, timbre carries
acoustic information that aids in distinguishing one phoneme
from another. Timbre is considered a qualitative acoustic
characteristic and is dependent upon harmonic compo-
nents of complex sounds (Lee et al., 2009). Musicians have
shown stronger physiological responses to the harmonic
components of both tones and speech (Lee et al., 2009;
Musacchia et al., 2008), indicating that their neural rep-
resentation of timbre is enhanced relative to nonmusicians.
As the perception of timbre is important for the discrimi-
nation of speech sounds, heightened sensitivity to timbre
could improve detection of novel words that differ from
familiar words by only one phoneme.
Other benefits of music training have been revealed
in investigations of auditory-specific cognitive functions. For
example, Strait et al. (2010) compared the performance of
adult musicians and nonmusicians on an auditory attention
task in which participants were instructed to press a response
Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2871
button as quickly as possible each time they heard the tar-
get stimulus (beep) and to refrain from responding when
they heard the foil (siren). Not only did the musicians dem-
onstrate significantly faster reaction times to targets than
nonmusicians, but performance on this task was significantly
correlated with the number of years of music practice, leading
the authors to conclude that long-term musical experience
strengthens auditory-specific cognitive abilities (Strait et al.,
2010).
Another cognitive function that plays a key role in
high-level tasks, including speech processing, is working
memory (Baddeley, 1992; Schulze & Koelsch, 2012). In-
vestigations of a musician advantage for working memory
have yielded somewhat mixed results. In addition to the
auditory attention task, Strait et al. (2010) assessed perfor-
mance on an auditory working memory task but found no
significant differences between the musician and nonmusi-
cian groups. However, other studies have found that adults
and children with musical training experience exhibit greater
auditory and verbal working memory capacity than their
peers who lack such experience (Bergman Nutley et al.,
2014; Parbery-Clark et al., 2009; Strait et al., 2012). Taken
together, these studies suggest that music training may en-
hance various dimensions of speech and cognitive processing.
Learning in Noise
This study assessed word learning ability in musicians
and nonmusicians using a rapid word-learning paradigm
for novel words that has been used previously to explore the
effects of age (adult, child), hearing status (normal hearing,
hearing loss), listening condition (quiet, noise), amplification
condition (unaided, aided), and quality of the acoustic signal
(various hearing device features) on efficiency of novel word
learning (Pittman, 2011, 2019; Pittman, Stewart, Odgear,
& Willman, 2017; Pittman, Stewart, Willman, & Odgear,
2017). In this paradigm, five novel words are presented 15–
20 times each, in random order. Participants learn to asso-
ciate each word to a corresponding novel image through
a process of trial and error using an interactive computer
game, which provides reinforcement for correct responses
but not for incorrect responses. This task has been shown
to be sensitive to differences in hearing status, amplification
condition, age, and quality of the acoustic signal (Pittman,
2011, 2019; Pittman, Stewart, Odgear, & Willman, 2017;
Pittman, Stewart, Willman, & Odgear, 2017). However,
notable reductions in learning and even detection of novel
words in noise have been observed across studies, regard-
less of participant age, hearing status, and amplification
condition, suggesting that performance on this task is vul-
nerable to the effects of noise (Pittman, 2011; Pittman &
Rash, 2016; Pittman, Stewart, Willman, & Odgear, 2017).
Because high school students spend as much as 80%
of the school day in noise (Crukley et al., 2011), it is rea-
sonable to expect that new words are rarely encountered in
quiet situations. In fact, even when learning words through
direct instruction in the classroom, learners may have
to contend with 60 dBA of noise in this environment
2872 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
(e.g., Crukley et al., 2011). If enhanced auditory experi-
ence stemming from music training can improve word
learning, it may also provide a valuable advantage in miti-
gating the effects of noise on learning.
Although Dittinger et al. (2016) reported that young
adult musicians have superior memory for novel words in
quiet, it is not known if that advantage is reduced, main-
tained, or enhanced in noise. However, there is evidence
that musical training facilitates superior speech perception
in noise. For example, Parbery-Clark et al. (2009) found
that young adult musicians scored significantly higher on
clinical assessments of speech perception in noise than young
adults lacking musical experience. Similar results for speech
perception in noise have been obtained in children enrolled
in music training from an early age (approximately 5 years)
compared to those with more limited musical experience
(Strait et al., 2012). If the benefit of music training ob-
served for perception of familiar words extends to the de-
tection and learning of new words, it would suggest that
music training may be useful for reducing the difficulties
associated with learning in noise.
Music training and the auditory proficiency it re-
quires may enhance perceptual and cognitive processing
skills important for learning new words. The purpose of
this experiment was to determine whether or not long-term
music training enhances auditory perception for tasks related
to listening and learning in quiet and in noise. To assess
selected stages in the word learning process, participants
completed a series of behavioral tasks involving familiar
and novel words. The framework for this test battery is
based on a model put forth by Pittman and Rash (2016),
which proposes that recognizing familiar words and learn-
ing new words share a common underlying process. This
model expands upon the lexical neighborhood model (Luce
& Pisoni, 1998), which posits that the recognition of famil-
iar words occurs when speech input triggers a process of
acoustic–phonetic pattern recognition, which is then re-
fined by higher level information to identify the word in
the lexicon that provides the closest possible match. The
Pittman and Rash model adds a component for the process
of identifying novel words—that is, those with no precise
lexical match. The process of configuration is also new to
the model and involves the integration of the acoustic–
phonetic information from the speech input with semantic
information inferred from the context in which the novel
word is embedded, allowing the listener to form a representa-
tion of the novel word in memory (Pittman & Rash, 2016).
A series of tasks that progress in their complexity was
selected in order to identify more precisely the level of diffi-
culty at which musical experience becomes advantageous.
Perception of familiar words was assessed with a traditional
clinical measure of speech perception. Sensitivity to the de-
tection of novel words was assessed using a mix of familiar
and novel words together in short sentences. The rapid
word-learning task described above (Pittman, 2011, 2019;
Pittman, Stewart, Odgear, & Willman, 2017; Pittman, Stewart,
Willman, & Odgear, 2017) was used to determine short-term
learning ability for a task composed entirely of novel words.
 New to this test battery were measures of detection
and recall of the learned words on the day immediately fol-
lowing the rapid word-learning task. There is evidence that
memory consolidation for auditorily learned information
occurs during a night’s sleep. One such study involved an
auditory pitch memory task in which 56 adult nonmusicians
(18–40 years old) with normal hearing heard sequences of
sine wave tones of varying pitch and were tested on their
accuracy in determining whether or not the pitch of a tone
at the end of a sequence was the same as the pitch of the
first tone in the same sequence (Gaab et al., 2004). Three
study sessions, each of which included blocks of training
and testing, were completed over a 24-hr period. Results
revealed no improvement in task performance across ses-
sions separated by 12 waking hours, but a significant im-
provement following sleep, indicating a “delayed learning”
effect. More recent evidence, however, suggests that sleep
may not be necessary to achieve posttraining consolidation.
Collet et al. (2012) conducted a study in which 20 native
French speakers (18–38 years old, all with normal hearing)
learned to discriminate between two synthetic syllables, dif-
fering only in voice onset time over two training/testing
sessions. For half of the participants, the two sessions were
separated by 12 waking hours, while the other half completed
their second session after a 12-hr period, which included ap-
proximately 8 hr of sleep. Performance gains (i.e., learning)
made during the initial session were mostly maintained at the
second session for both groups, indicating that performance
stabilization occurred over the delay independent of sleep
(Collet et al., 2012). A similar study used a verbal auditory
identification task to train and test young adults (18–26 years
old) with normal hearing on consonant–vowel pair discrimi-
nation (Roth et al., 2005). Results revealed significant im-
provement in syllable discrimination when tested 6–12 hr
after training, whether or not that interval included a period
of sleep. However, the largest gains in performance were ob-
served 24 hr (including at least 6 sleeping hours) posttraining.
It should be noted that, in all of these studies, the task
used to assess consolidation of auditorily learned informa-
tion was the same as the one used for training. This was not
the case in this study. However, a subsequent study com-
pleted in our lab revealed significant positive correlations
between next-day retention of novel words and performance
on the rapid word-learning task (de Diego-Lázaro et al., 2021;
Pittman & de Diego-Lázaro, 2021). This suggests that
there is a direct relationship between performance during
the learning process on the first day and next-day recall,
such that we can predict next-day retention fairly well. The
detection task used in this study assessed participants’ abil-
ity to detect newly learned words within continuous dis-
course, while the recall task quantified the participants’
retention of the word/referent pairs. Together, both mea-
sures revealed the participants’ capacity for consolidating
newly learned information into long-term memory.
In this study, perception of familiar words and the
ability to detect, learn, and recall novel words was examined
in young, normal-hearing adults with extensive musical
training, as well as in age-matched peers with no musical
experience. Participants with musical training were expected
to perceive and learn novel words more effectively than par-
ticipants without musical training. It was also expected that
participants with musical experience would be able to more
effectively consolidate novel words into long-term memory,
allowing them to both detect and recall newly learned words
more accurately 1 day following training than their nonmu-
sician peers. Finally, it was anticipated that the advantages
of musical training would be greater for words learned in
multitalker babble compared to quiet due to the enhanced
auditory perception of these listeners.
Method
Participants
Twenty adult musicians (12 men and eight women)
between the ages of 23 and 34 years were recruited from the
student population in the School of Music at Arizona State
University and from local community symphonies. Musical
history was characterized in terms of the age when musical
training was initiated and years of consistent practice. Musi-
cians had between 13 and 25 years of training (M = 18.8 ±
4.0 years), initiated between 3 and 12 years of age (M = 7.7 ±
2.6 years). All participants held at least a bachelor’s degree.
For 19 of the 20 musicians, this degree was in a music-related
discipline (performance, education, theory, etc.), whereas one
musician held a degree in a nonmusic discipline.
An additional 20 adults (four men and 16 women)
between the ages of 21 and 38 years with little to no musical
experience served as a control group. Ten of the nonmusi-
cians had no music training at all, while the other 10 had be-
tween 0.25 and 2.25 years of training (M = 0.5 ± 0.7 years),
initiated between the ages of 6 and 15 years (M = 11.0 ±
2.8 years). None of the nonmusicians reported any training
within the preceding 10 years. All participants held at least
a bachelor’s degree in a nonmusic discipline.
All participants were monolingual English speakers
and had normal hearing bilaterally, as confirmed by pure-
tone audiometry. Hearing thresholds were ≤ 25 dB HL for
octave frequencies between 0.25 and 8 kHz, with the ex-
ception of one musician, whose threshold at 8 kHz was
30 dB HL in the right ear only. Average hearing thresholds
are shown in Table 1, along with demographic information
for each participant group.
Auditory Stimuli
Word and sentence stimuli were recorded by a talker
having a standard American English dialect at a sampling
rate of 22.05 kHz using a microphone with a flat frequency
response to 10 kHz. Stimuli were digitized and edited into
individual .wav files using Adobe Audition (Version 1.5) and
equated for the root-mean-square level.
Test Battery
Word Recognition
Participants heard and repeated aloud sets of 25 familiar
words from the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6
Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2873
Table 1. Demographic information, audiometric thresholds for octave frequencies 0.25–8 kHz, and music training history for musician (MUS)
and nonmusician (NOM) groups.
Male:female Average age in
Group ratio years (SD) Ear 0.25
MUS 12:8 27.0 (3.8) Right 9 9
Left 11
NOM 4:16 26.5 (4.5) Right 10
Left 11
(NU-6) word recognition test (Tillman & Carhart, 1966). In
order to facilitate accurate scoring, participants’ verbal re-
sponses were captured with a digital audio recorder (Zoom
H2N) coupled to a head-worn microphone (Shure, WH20)
positioned approximately 2 in. from the corner of the
participant’s mouth. Responses were then reviewed and
scored offline as either correct or incorrect. Overall per-
formance was scored in proportion correct and arcsine
transformed for statistical analysis. No reinforcement was
provided for this task. One list of 25 words took less than
2 min to complete. Appendix A contains the word lists
used for this task.
Nonword Detection
The nonword detection task involved a mix of familiar
and novel words, presented together in four-word sentences.
Briefly, these sentences were adapted from sentences used in
Stelmachowicz et al. (2000) by substituting individual pho-
nemes with phonemes of similar phonotactic probability in
order to change some of the real words to nonsense words
(see Pittman & Schuett, 2013, for a detailed description of
this task). All words were monosyllabic. Within each list of
12 sentences, six sentences contained two nonsense words,
four sentences contained one nonsense word, and two sen-
tences contained zero nonsense words. Following the pre-
sentation of each sentence, participants indicated which words
(if any) in each sentence were nonsense words by selecting
the corresponding numbered button(s) on a computer screen.
Visual reinforcement was provided via an interactive com-
puter game for correct responses, but not for incorrect
responses. One list took less than 2 min to complete. Ap-
pendix B contains the sentence lists used for this task; non-
sense words are in bolded text.
To evaluate the effects of musical training and listen-
ing condition on the ability to detect novel words in the
context of sentences, results from this task were analyzed
according to signal detection theory (Swets, 1996). Partic-
ipants’ responses were broken down into hits (correctly
identified nonsense words), misses (nonsense words identi-
fied as real), false alarms (real words identified as nonsense),
and correct rejections (correctly identified real words). Per-
formance was quantified by two metrics: (a) d’ was determined
by calculating the difference between the standardized (z-
transformed) scores for hits and false alarms and (b) c was
calculated as the inverse of one half the sum of the stan-
dardized scores for hits and false alarms (Green & Swets,
2874 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
Average threshold (dB HL)
Music training
0.5 1 2 4 8 in years (SD)
8 10 8 5 18.8 (4.0)
9 8 9 8 3
10 9 8 7 5 0.5 (0.7)
10 8 8 8 3
1974). Use of these metrics allowed for the examination
of the effects of music training and listening condition on
participants’ ability to discriminate between familiar and
novel words (d’), as well as their decision criteria for making
this discrimination (c). In short, d’ served as an indication of
participants’ sensitivity to novel words, while c revealed the
presence and magnitude of response bias toward familiar or
novel words.
Word/Referent Association Task
Participants learned novel words through a process of
trial and error using an interactive computer game (Pittman,
2011). Participants heard five nonsense words, presented
randomly one at a time. Each nonsense word was paired
with one of five nonsense objects/characters. A picture of
each nonsense image was displayed on one of five buttons
arranged across the bottom of a computer screen. Listeners se-
lected one of the five images after presentation of each non-
sense word. Visual reinforcement for correct selections was
provided by a computer game located above the response
buttons. The game advanced following each correct re-
sponse (e.g., one piece of a puzzle appeared), while no rein-
forcement was provided for incorrect selections. Participants
were instructed to use the reinforcement to associate each
nonsense word with the correct image. Each nonsense word
was presented 18 times, for a total of 90 randomized trials.
This task supports the configuration process in the expanded
lexical neighborhood model, as the repeated exposures
facilitate refinement of the acoustic and semantic proper-
ties of each word. The paradigm also satisfies the retrieval
practice required to effectively associate a word with its
referent for later recall (Karpicke, 2012; Karpicke & Roediger,
2008). This task took approximately 5–6 min to complete.
Appendix C contains the orthographic representations of
the nonsense words used for this task, as well as the pho-
netic transcription and phonotactic probability (Vitevitch
& Luce, 2004) of each word.
Performance on this task was quantified in terms of
the efficiency of word learning, defined as the number of
trials required to achieve the criterion performance of 71%
accuracy. To calculate efficiency of word learning, trial-
by-trial data were reduced chronologically to nine bins of
10 trials each, and the proportion of correct responses within
each bin was calculated. The raw data were then smoothed
n
with an exponential growth function Pc ¼ 1−0:8e− c , where
Pc is the probability of a correct answer, 1−0.8 reflects
chance performance for this task (20%), e is 2.718…, n is
the midpoint of the trial block (5, 15, 25, etc.), and c is the
time constant of the process. When the number of trials
equals the time constant (n = c), performance is 71% cor-
rect. This was accomplished by adjusting estimates of c to
minimize the sum of the squared deviations between the
observed data and the points predicted (Pittman, 2011).
The number of trials was log transformed and limited to
no more than 1,000 trials. The inverse of the number of
trials required for each participant to reach this criterion
level of performance is the efficiency of word learning.
Learned-Word Detection
On the day following completion of the word learn-
ing task, participants listened to a spoken passage recorded
from the same talker who produced the nonsense words in
the word/referent association task. Some words in the pas-
sage were replaced with the learned words, while others were
replaced with unfamiliar nonsense words (foils). Three of
the five learned words appeared in the passage; three repe-
titions of each learned word occurred within the discourse.
The passage also contained three repetitions of each of three
unfamiliar foils. Together, each participant was exposed to
21 repetitions of the target words over the 2 days of testing
and only three repetitions of the foils. Thus, minimal famil-
iarity to the foils was expected. The passage contained
approximately 250 words (including nonsense targets and
foils) and resulted in a recording that was approximately
90 s in duration, which was the length of time participants
were given to complete the task.
Participants were given a brass “cricket clicker” and
instructed to click as soon as they heard a word they learned
the previous day and to ignore all other words. The audible
clicks were recorded using the omnidirectional microphone
setting on a digital recorder (Zoom H2N), while the passage
(i.e., the output of the soundcard) was recorded simulta-
neously in a separate channel. The waveforms from both
channels were examined visually offline. Clicks appeared
as large impulses in the waveform. The timestamp of each
click was compared to the timestamp of the occurrence of
each learned word and each foil within the passage to de-
termine each participant’s hits, misses, correct rejections,
and false alarms.
Performance on this task was also analyzed using
signal detection theory. In this case, d’ served as an indica-
tion of participants’ sensitivity to the learned words, while
c was used to identify any response bias toward the targets
or foils. Appendix D contains the passages used for this
task. Learned word targets are indicated in bold while un-
familiar foils are italicized.
Word/Referent Recall Task
Participants completed a written posttest consisting
of the two sets of five images learned the previous day, with
all 10 images visible on a single page of paper, in random
order. On the same page, just below the images, a word
bank was provided containing orthographic representations
of the 10 learned nonsense words, plus 10 foils (unfamiliar
but similar nonsense words). To assess word recall after con-
solidation of words learned the previous day, this task
was completed prior to the learned-word detection task
to avoid additional, same-day exposures to some of the
learned words. Additionally, to avoid multiple exposures
of unfamiliar nonsense words, the foils used in this task
differed from those used in the learned-word detection task.
Participants were instructed to label each image with the
correct word from the word bank. This task took approxi-
mately 3–5 min to complete. Responses were scored in pro-
portion correct for each set of words learned. Appendix E
contains the word bank used for this task.
Procedure
Participants completed the word recognition, non-
word detection, rapid word-learning (word/referent associ-
ation), and learned-word detection tasks twice: once in quiet
and once in multitalker babble at +3 dB signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR). The order of listening condition was counterbalanced
across participants. Different word lists, sentence lists, novel
word sets, and spoken passages were used for each condition;
one list, set, or passage was presented in each condition. The
stimuli were presented from a desktop computer using custom
laboratory software. Auditory stimuli (NU-6 words, sentences,
novel words) were routed from the computer through a high-
speed (96 kHz), high-quality (24-bit resolution) soundcard
with six analog channels (Echo Gina 3G) to binaural insert
earphones (ER-3A; Etymotic Research) and presented at
60 dBA. The experimental software was also used to display
visual reinforcement and record participants’ responses.
The word/referent recall task was a written test and
was thus completed in quiet. It included all words learned
the previous day and was administered once. Detection of the
learned words was assessed in the same listening conditions
(quiet, babble) in which they were learned. The order of lis-
tening condition was counterbalanced across participants.
In accordance with the policies of the internal review
board at Arizona State University, informed consent was
obtained from each participant prior to testing. Comple-
tion of study tasks required no more than 2.5 hr over two
sessions. Subjects were paid in cash for their participation.
Results
To test the main hypothesis, multivariate analyses of
variance were used to examine group differences in the var-
ious learning tasks across listening conditions. The indepen-
dent variables were musical experience (long-term training,
no training) and listening condition (quiet, babble).
Figure 1 shows average performance on word recog-
nition as a function of listening condition for musicians and
nonmusicians. For both groups, perception of familiar words
was 11%–12% poorer in babble than in quiet. Musicians’
scores were also 1%–2% higher than those of nonmusicians
in both listening conditions. Multivariate analyses of vari-
ance revealed significantly better recognition in quiet than
in babble, F(1, 38) = 104.68, p < .001, η2 = .586. However,
Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2875
Figure 1. Averages (x) and distribution of scores on word recognition
in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS) and nonmusicians (NOM).
Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate median scores. Lower
and upper box boundaries indicate 25th and 75th percentiles,
respectively, while lower and upper error lines show the 10th and
90th percentiles, respectively. Asterisk indicates significant difference
across listening condition (*p < .001).
Figure 2. Averages (x) and distribution of scores (d’) on nonword
detection in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS) and nonmusicians
(NOM). Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate median scores.
Lower and upper box boundaries indicate 25th and 75th percentiles,
respectively, while lower and upper error lines show the 10th and
90th percentiles, respectively. Filled circle shows score falling
outside the 10th percentile. Asterisk indicates significant difference
across listening condition (*p < .001).

criteria for musicians and nonmusicians on the nonword de-

no effect of group was found, F(1, 38) = 3.21, p = .078, tection task as a function of listening condition. While the
indicating that word recognition was equivalent across response criteria in the quiet condition was neutral for both
groups when collapsed across listening condition. Fur- groups, the response criteria shifted significantly toward a
thermore, the Group × Listening Condition interaction
was not significant, F(1, 38) = 0.02, p = .880, indicating
that performance in both groups was similarly impacted Figure 3. Averages (x) and distribution of response bias (c) for
by babble. nonword detection in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS) and
Figure 2 shows average performance for musicians nonmusicians (NOM). Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate
and nonmusicians on the nonword detection task as a func- median scores. Lower and upper box boundaries indicate 25th and
75th percentiles, respectively, while lower and upper error lines
tion of listening condition. Performance is expressed in
show the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. Asterisk indicates
units of d’, which denotes sensitivity to the nonsense words. significant difference across listening condition (*p < .001).
For both groups, d’ scores were significantly higher in
quiet than in babble, F(1, 38) = 94.19, p < .001, η2 = .560,
indicating that babble significantly decreased the listeners’
ability to differentiate the nonsense words from the real
words. No main effect of group was observed on the non-
word detection task, F(1, 38) = 0.07, p = .798. While the
results showed that the musicians performed slightly bet-
ter than the nonmusicians in quiet and the nonmusicians
performed slightly better than the musicians in babble,
the Group × Listening Condition interaction was not sig-
nificant, F(1, 38) = 0.78, p = .382.
The response criteria (c) calculated for this task indi-
cates whether or not the listeners’ responses were free of
bias (c = 0) such that their errors were evenly distributed
between false alarms and misses. Response criteria that
deviate to positive values of c represent a bias toward clas-
sifying nonsense words as real (miss), whereas negative
values of c represent a bias toward classifying real words as
nonsense (false alarm). Figure 3 shows the average response

2876 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
positive bias (c) in babble, F(1, 38) = 26.00, p < .001, η2 =
.260. This indicates that, on average, the participants failed
to identify the nonsense words when perception was disrupted
by the presence of multitalker babble. No main effect of
group was observed for this task, F(1, 38) = 1.30, p = .258,
and the Group × Listening Condition interaction was also
not significant, F(1, 38) = 0.67, p = .417. These results indi-
cate that musicians and nonmusicians approach the identifica-
tion of nonsense words in the same way and that musicians
did not demonstrate superior response criteria in either lis-
tening condition.
Figure 4 shows average efficiency of word learning
(i.e., performance on the word/referent association task) as
a function of listening condition for musicians and nonmu-
sicians. Recall that learning efficiency was determined by
log transforming the number of trials required to achieve a
criterion performance (71% correct), limited to 1,000 trials.
This resulted in a scale of 0–3, where a learning efficiency of
3 indicates perfect learning while a learning efficiency of 0 in-
dicates no learning. For this task, performance did not
decline in multitalker babble relative to quiet, F(1, 38) =
0.28, p = .601, suggesting that learning was resistant to
the adverse effects of multitalker babble. In quiet, the word-
learning efficiency of nonmusicians was slightly greater than
that of musicians, while in babble, musicians learned non-
sense words more efficiently than nonmusicians. Even so,
no significant main effect of group, F(1, 38) = 0.54, p = .466,
or Group × Listening Condition interaction, F(1, 38) = 3.02,
p = .086, was observed.
Figure 5 shows average performance for musicians
and nonmusicians on the learned-word detection task as a
function of listening condition. Performance is expressed in
units of d’ to indicate the listeners’ sensitivity to the newly
learned words when presented in the context of continuous
Figure 4. Averages (x) and distribution of word learning efficiency
in quiet and babble for musicians and nonmusicians. Solid lines
inside the shaded boxes indicate median scores. Lower and upper
box boundaries indicate 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively,
while lower and upper error lines show the 10th and 90th percentiles,
respectively.
Figure 5. Averages (x) and distribution of scores (d’) on learned-
word detection in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS) and
nonmusicians (NOM). Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate
median scores. Lower and upper box boundaries indicate 25th
and 75th percentiles, respectively, while lower and upper error
lines show the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. Filled
circles show scores falling outside the 10th percentile.
discourse. Unlike the results of the nonword detection task,
sensitivity to the newly learned nonsense words was not signif-
icantly better in quiet than in multitalker babble, F(1, 38) =
1.07, p = .304. Additionally, the performance of the musicians
and nonmusicians was equivalent, F(1, 38) = 0.19, p = .666.
Finally, no Group × Listening Condition interaction was ob-
served, F(1, 38) = 0.02, p = .904. Thus, exposure to nonsense
words via the interactive learning paradigm was sufficient
to allow most listeners to distinguish these words from un-
familiar nonsense words the next day. These results indicate
that musical training experience did not, on average, further
improve the ability to detect newly learned words.
As with the nonword detection task, response criteria
(c) was calculated for this task, as well. Recall that response
criteria near c = 0 indicates no bias. For this task, positive
values of c represent a failure to identify learned words (mis-
ses) as they occur in the passage, whereas negative values
represent a failure to refrain from identifying unfamiliar
words (false alarm). Figure 6 shows the average response
criteria (c) for each group as a function of listening con-
dition. No significant main effect of group, F(1, 38) = 0.01,
p = .932, or condition, F(1, 38) = 0.27, p = .607, or signifi-
cant interaction, F(1, 38) = 0.49, p = .488, was observed.
On average, both groups demonstrated a negative response
bias in quiet and in babble, indicating a bias toward the
identification of more nonsense words than were learned
the previous day. It appears that participants were inclined
to respond with a click each time they heard an unfamiliar
word, regardless of whether they were hearing it for the
first or 21st time.
Finally, Figure 7 shows average performance for mu-
sicians and nonmusicians on the word/referent recall task
Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2877
Figure 6. Averages (x) and distribution of response bias (c) during
learned-word detection in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS)
and nonmusicians (NOM). Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate
median scores. Lower and upper box boundaries indicate 25th and
75th percentiles, respectively, while lower and upper error lines show
the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. Filled circle shows scores
falling outside the 10th percentile.
as a function of listening condition. Both groups performed
similarly across conditions, recalling, on average, 61%–
69% of nonsense words learned the day before. Performance
differed by 3%–8% across groups, with nonmusicians scor-
ing slightly higher on words learned in quiet and musicians
scoring slightly higher on words learned in babble. Multi-
variate analysis of variance revealed no significant effect
of group, F(1, 38) = 0.07, p = .789, or listening condition,
Figure 7. Averages (x) and distribution of scores on next-day word
recall in quiet and babble for musicians (MUS) and nonmusicians
(NOM). Solid lines inside the shaded boxes indicate median scores.
Lower and upper box boundaries indicate 25th and 75th
percentiles, respectively, while lower and upper error lines show
the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively.
2878 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
F(1, 38) = 0.62, p = .437, for this task. The Group × Listening
Condition interaction also was not significant, F(1, 38) = 0.58,
p = .449. These results indicate that musicians did not
show an advantage over nonmusicians for recalling non-
sense words learned the previous day. Furthermore, the
multitalker babble had little effect on recall of the newly
learned words in listeners with normal hearing.
Discussion
The objective of this study was to investigate the im-
pact of musical experience on perception of familiar words
and on learning new words in quiet and in multitalker bab-
ble. Significant effects of listening condition were observed
for word recognition and nonword detection, but not for
word learning or retention. These results indicate that an
acoustic competitor such as multitalker babble affects the
perception of familiar words differently than learning new
words. While multitalker babble creates a mismatch be-
tween auditory perception and auditory representation of
familiar words in memory, the formation of auditory rep-
resentations of new words in memory proceeds similarly in
both listening environments, albeit the quality of those rep-
resentations may differ.
It was hypothesized that participants with extensive
musical training would demonstrate an advantage over
their nonmusician peers and that group differences would
be larger for the more difficult listening condition. The re-
sults did not support this hypothesis. Instead, word recog-
nition, nonword detection, word learning, and recall did
not differ significantly across groups. Although some tasks
(most notably the word/referent recall task) showed large
variability in performance, it is unlikely that this accounted
for the lack of group differences. Published effect sizes for
the word recognition, nonword detection, and word/referent
association tasks indicate that a sample size of 20 in each
group is sufficient to reveal significant group effects if they
exist (e.g., Pittman, Stewart, Willman, & Odgear, 2017).
While increasing the sample size would reduce within-group
variability, average performance for all of the outcome mea-
sures indicates that doing so is unlikely to yield an apprecia-
ble difference in the means of each group.
It has been suggested that music students, when exam-
ining a new piece of music, create internal musical represen-
tations by drawing from what they have learned through
their experiences with previously encountered material
(Bamberger, 2000, as cited in Taetle & Cutietta, 2002).
Likewise, the word/referent recall and learned-word de-
tection tasks used in this study required participants to
access information learned the previous day and identify
it in a different modality (visual) or in a different context
(continuous discourse). The musicians were expected to le-
verage their unique experience when processing new audi-
tory information, but they did not perform any better on
these tasks than the listeners without musical experience.
That is, auditory skills related to music learning did not
appear to generalize to the process of learning new words.
 Differences in experimental design may explain the
inconsistent findings between the present and previous stud-
ies. While the objectives and participants in this study align
closely with those of Dittinger et al. (2016, 2017, 2019), the
stimuli and methodology were unique. First, the findings
of superior learning in musicians compared to nonmusicians
in the Dittinger et al. studies are supported by evidence from
electroencephalogram data collected in the same participants
—specifically, changes to the N400 component of the event-
related potential, a measure which was not included in this
study. All three studies revealed a significantly faster increase
in N400 amplitude during training in musicians compared
to nonmusicians, reflecting accelerated encoding of the novel
word meanings. Additionally, the novel words learned in
the Dittinger et al. studies were natural Thai syllables that
differed in consonant place, vowel duration, and tonal qual-
ity. By contrast, the stimuli in this study were representative
of multisyllabic English words, requiring the participants to
retain longer and more complex combinations of phonemes
in memory. Another notable difference from the Dittinger
et al. studies was the use of familiar objects as referents.
Essentially, the participants learned a new name (or syn-
onym) for something they already had a name for, as one
does when learning a foreign language. In this study, un-
familiar nonsense images that had no name were paired
with the nonsense words. This required participants to form
an entirely new representation, consisting of a new object
and its new name. Finally, the Dittinger protocol facilitated
word learning through direct instruction, whereas the learn-
ing task used in this study represents active learning through
retrieval practice (Karpicke, 2012; Karpicke & Roediger,
2008). Despite the differences in methodology, the results
of these studies suggest that musicians have an advantage
over their nonmusician peers when it comes to learning words
representative of tonal languages (such as Thai), but that both
groups learn words representative of atonal languages (such
as English) equally well. This particular benefit of music train-
ing may be a reflection of musicians’ superior ability to detect
pitch contrasts in both speech and music, relative to nonmusi-
cians (Perfors & Ong, 2012; Schön et al., 2004).
The results of this study are, however, consistent with
another study in which a similar test battery was used to
assess learning and retention of novel words in English–
Spanish bilingual children, compared to monolingual English-
speaking children (de Diego-Lázaro et al., 2021). Results of
this study revealed no advantage of bilingualism for learn-
ing or retention of novel words that conformed to the
phonotactic rules of English, Spanish, and Arabic. Taken
together with this study, these findings suggest that, while
these tasks have been demonstrated to be sensitive to differ-
ences in auditory status (normal hearing, hearing loss), this
test battery may not be as sensitive to differences in audi-
tory experience (musical training, bilingualism).
Unique to this study is the inclusion of a multitalker
babble condition—a common communication setting. It
was hypothesized that the musicians’ performance in each
task would be less impacted by noise than that of their non-
musician peers, but this was also not supported by the data.
These results are inconsistent with findings from previous
studies showing superior speech-in-noise perception in
musicians (Parbery-Clark et al., 2009; Strait et al., 2012).
Thus, it may be useful to again consider methodological
differences across studies.
In previous studies, speech perception in noise was
assessed using tests with varying SNRs, in which either the
noise was presented at a constant level and the level of the
speech was increased and decreased according to the listener’s
performance (Hearing in Noise Test; Nilsson et al., 1994), or
the level of the speech was held constant and the level of the
noise was gradually increased (Quick Speech-In-Noise Test [
Killion et al., 2004] and Words in Noise Test [Wilson, 1993]).
Results of these prior investigations revealed that musicians
were able to repeat words and sentences accurately at poorer
SNRs than nonmusicians. Thus, it is possible that musical
advantage for speech perception in noise may be SNR de-
pendent, with significant benefits observed for more demanding
listening conditions than those used in this study.
Differences in the physical setup of the experiment
are another potential source of inconsistency across studies
of speech perception performance in musicians and non-
musicians. For example, the musically trained children in
the study by Strait et al. (2012) showed superior performance
on speech-in-noise testing when the noise was spatially
separated from the speech signal, but not when noise was
collocated with speech. On the other hand, adult musicians
outperformed their nonmusician peers in collocated but
not spatially separated noise conditions (Parbery-Clark
et al., 2009). In this study, speech and babble were pre-
sented binaurally through insert earphones such that both
ears received identical signals, similar to the collocated noise
condition. While it is plausible that this slight difference in
methodology accounts for some variation in speech percep-
tion results, this was not the first study to report findings that
differed from those of Parbery-Clark et al. (2009). Ruggles
et al. (2014) assessed speech understanding in noise in musi-
cians and nonmusicians, with the goal of replicating the
Parbery-Clark et al. study. On average, the musicians per-
formed better on the Hearing in Noise Test and the Quick
Speech-In-Noise Test than their nonmusician peers, though
group differences were small and did not reach significance.
Similarly, the musicians in this study slightly outperformed
their nonmusician peers for most tasks completed in babble,
but the differences were not significant. Fuller et al. (2014)
tested word recognition at three SNRs (+10, +5, 0), as
well as sentence recognition using noise and multitalker
maskers in musicians and nonmusicians. Musicians’ word
recognition did not differ significantly from those of non-
musicians at any SNR, nor were any significant group dif-
ferences observed for sentence recognition in any of the
masker conditions. Similarly, Boebinger et al. (2015) used
four different speech and noise maskers to assess sentence
recognition in musicians and nonmusicians and found no
advantage of music training in perceiving masked speech.
Taken together, these findings indicate that the advan-
tage of music training for understanding speech in noise
is equivocal at best.
Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2879
 As for learning new words, it was expected that the
rigor of musical training would result in superior acoustic
pattern recognition such that participants with musical train-
ing would learn and recall novel words more effectively in
noise than their nonmusician peers. This was not observed.
Instead, the results of this investigation suggest that both
musicians and nonmusicians possess auditory expertise
that facilitates word learning in noise, suggesting that
musical abilities may be an extension of that expertise—an
extension which may not have been necessary for word
learning through retrieval practice in this cohort. If so,
robust relationships between auditory experience and out-
come measures assessing these word-learning skills are un-
likely to be observed in young normal-hearing listeners who
show healthy neural function and generally good perfor-
mance on listening tasks. The relationship between music
training and learning ability may be clearer in a group of
listeners with varied physiological status (e.g., normal hear-
ing vs. hearing impaired) and varied auditory experience
over the life span. It is possible that musical training did
not provide a benefit for performance on word-learning
tasks in these young, normal-hearing adults because no
detriment existed that required compensation. Listeners
in this study did not represent either developing or declin-
ing perceptual or cognitive functions. Thus, these results
may serve as a benchmark against which performance in
children and older adults with and without musical experi-
ence can be compared (as in Dittinger et al., 2019). Such
investigations may better reveal the impact of auditory
training on learning during vulnerable stages of develop-
ment or aging.
Finally, some limitations of this study were identified.
First, musician and nonmusician groups were not equated
for gender. The musician group consisted of more men than
women, while women were overrepresented in the non-
musician group. Although efforts were made to recruit non-
musicians across various university departments, interest
in participating in a hearing-related study was highest from
graduate students in the Speech and Hearing Science pro-
gram, the vast majority of whom are women. Nevertheless,
the possibility that this mismatch in gender distribution
influenced study outcomes cannot be ruled out. Second,
ceiling effects were observed for the word recognition and
nonword detection tasks presented in quiet. Thus, the abil-
ity to detect a musical training advantage for some mea-
sures was limited by high levels of performance by young
adults with normal hearing, regardless of their musical ex-
perience. Lastly, this study utilized a paradigm designed
to assess various stages in the word-learning process using
more ecologically valid measures and conditions. As noted
previously, while this test battery has been shown to be
sensitive to the quality of the auditory signal, the impact
of auditory experience may not be as readily apparent. Ad-
ditionally, learning requires the coordination of several
skills, which may dilute a musical advantage observed for
discrete components of auditory learning. That is, the ben-
efits of musical training for auditory processing and work-
ing memory tasks may not be large enough to generalize to
2880 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
more complex tasks. However, it is possible that a musical
training advantage for these tasks may exist for listening
conditions (i.e., presentation levels and SNRs) not used in
this study.
Conclusions
In this study, enriched auditory experience in the form
of long-term music training in young, normal-hearing adults
did not significantly enhance their ability to learn, detect,
or retain novel words. These results indicate that novel word
detection, learning, and recall are equivalent in musicians
and nonmusicians during the young–adult years. The re-
sults lay the foundation for the evaluation of a potential
musical advantage with advancing age and/or degraded
hearing acuity.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Student Research Grant in
Audiology from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foun-
dation, awarded to the first author. Many thanks to the staff of
the Pediatric Amplification Lab and to the study participants for
their time and cooperation.
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Appendix A
Word Lists—Word Recognition Task

List 3a List 3b

base luck pearl germ road gun rat when mouse phone
mess walk search life shall jug void name hire soup
cause youth ditch team late sheep wire thin cab dodge
mop pain talk lid cheek five half tell hit seize
good date ring pole beg rush note bar chat cool

Appendix B
Sentence Lists—Nonword Detection Task

List 1 List 2

Close all three doors. Clocks tick on time.

Goats climb up rocks. Step to your right.
Pive off the cliff. Glant pots in yards.
Her sants are red. Keep olf black books.
The moon shimes bright. Fresh bread smegs great.
No news is bood. We laughed out loug.
Vrange snarts when worn. Dut skages on feet.
Brown cake dastes sich Choose the drey zie.
Neave that trash oug. Fow draw four gairs.
Smart sers fleep late. Grab thalk ank pens.
Drave the fuge waves. Cheps knead thig dough.
Lead pown the pav. They flot the zeer.

Appendix C
Word Sets – Word/Referent Association Task

Phonotactic Probability
Phonetic
Transcription Orthographic Positional Biphone

Biosimilars (Set 1)
sɑθnəd sothnud 0.3347 0.0081
dɑztəl doztul 0.3425 0.0146
fɑznəʃ foznush 0.3345 0.0073
stɑmən stomun 0.3445 0.0455
hɑmtəl homtul 0.3594 0.0212
Robotics (Set 2)
smɛntɑs smentoss 0.3436 0.0132
pɛdtɑn pedton 0.3513 0.0080
dɛpmɑst depmost 0.3394 0.0187
sɛntɑp sentop 0.3585 0.0333
kɛnsɑm kensom 0.3307 0.0384

Stewart & Pittman: Word Learning and Musical Experience 2883

Appendix D
Passages—Learned Word Detection Task

Passage 1

Today’s biologic medications are significant to patients with serious or chronic illnesses. A biologic somnud is an example of
biotechnology. Among other applications, biotechnology may involve the use of a homtul to produce a medical treatment.
Most biologics come from cells that have been genetically engineered to produce a particular hoznush. This process involves
introducing stomun into a specific type of homtul, typically a harmless type of bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cell, which acts
as a host cell. The stomun tells the cell how to produce the hoznush. Once a cell has been engineered, the next step is to
create a fothnul, which has a complimentary function. This unique fothnul is then frozen and stored and is used as the doztul
from which all future copies of the cells are made. A biosimilar is a somnud that is highly similar to the doztul. However, a
biosimilar is not considered a generic. Generics are medications that are chemically identical to the original brand-name
products. A biosimilar somnud is different, however, in that its stomun is not identical to that of the original biologic. The
homtul that is used as the host cell may differ as well. That is, they come from an entirely different fothnul. However, each
biosimilar must undergo rigorous testing to ensure that the hoznush is effectively the same as the original biologic in terms
of the bioactivity of the doztul. Many patients are hopeful that biosimilars will provide a more affordable treatment option.

Passage 2

The Junior Tech Challenge is a student-centered activity that requires each team to design, build, test, and program an autonomous
and driver-operated robot that must perform a series of tasks. Rookie teams are provided with simple, basic instructions for
building a functioning robot that can be successful in competition. The robot design is based around a kensom, which forms
the base of the robot and connects the pentoss to the rest of the machine. The sentop forms the upper portion of the robot
and provides stability to the robot’s temson. This component also houses the robot’s electronics so that it can be driven
remotely. If built correctly, the temson of the robot can extend to manipulate objects using the depmost at its end. The
component that makes the robot autonomous is the pentoss. The whole machine is powered by the drive motor. For this
reason, the sentop must be sturdy in order to provide precise movement to the depmost, but also lightweight, so as not
to overload the motor. Assembly of the kensom consists of using socket-head cap screws to connect each kedton to form
the rectangular base. The temson of the robot, when not in use, rests on the front kedton. Components used in the construction
of the sentop include a set of gears and axels that allow the depmost to be extended forward or upward. Kedton alignment is
critical to construction, as the pentoss of the robot will be difficult to maneuver if the kensom is crooked.

Appendix E
Word Bank—Word/Referent Recall Task

mednost domfush sentop homtul smedmod

pedton todsun depmost sothnud kentop
kensom stomun foznush doztul nothfud
stomtul tensom sedtoss stoznud smentoss

2884 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 64 • 2870–2884 • July 2021
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