Supplementary material from "Interindividual variability in auditory scene analysis revealed by confidence judgements"

Musicians responded to the ambiguous case with long reaction times and low confidence, whereas non-musicians responded with fast reaction times and maximal confidence. In a subsequent experiment, non-musicians displayed reduced confidence for the ambiguous case when pure-tone components of the Shepard complex were made easier to hear out. The results suggest an effect of musical training on scene analysis: we speculate that musicians were more likely to hear out components within complex auditory scenes, perhaps because of enhanced attentional resolution, and thus discovered the ambiguity.

For untrained listeners, stimulus ambiguity was not available to perceptual awareness.This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.