Musical Timbre: Individual Differences in Working Memory

ABSTRACT. Researchers have shown that working memory is related to a variety of high-level cognitive processes. However, the results of recent research have suggested that may be because of its role in attentional control. In the present experiment, the authors inves-tigated that hypothesis by using an attentional interference task with musical stimuli. Lis-teners were asked to monitor one ear for either a clarinet or violin tone and to ignore any information in the other ear. On some of the trials, they heard only one tone and on other trials, either the same instrument in both ears or different instruments. Individual differ-ences were measured in working memory and musical experience. The results showed more attentional interference in the different-instrument condition for participants with lower working memory scores, which suggested that working memory involves the abili-ty to control attention to inhibit irrelevant information. Key words: attention, Stroop, timbre, working memory span EVERYONE HAS EXPERIENCED being in a noisy environment with com-peting sources of incoming information. On a single day at any university, one can find students writing papers in a noisy computer laboratory while they mon