Sex Differenches in Memory for Timbre: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

Although female/male cognitive differences have been studied for some time, little is known about such differences relative to music. Highly-trained musicians (15 females and 15 males) performed a memory task for musical timbre modeled after the missing-displaced visual object test known to favor female performance. Subjects were tested on memory for a timbre missing from a previously presented set of synthesized instrumental timbres, and a control series of white noise bursts at two different intensity levels. Subjects were given the missing-displaced visual object test and ERPs were recorded from three midline sites and two lateral sites. Waveforms were subjected to a principal component analysis and analysis of variance. Females and males performed equally well on both of the auditory series and the visual object test. Both auditory series elicited several ERP components: a strong early peak to the white noise, and both early (P3a) and late (P3b) peaks to the timbre series. PCA factor, maximum at 675 ms (P3b), showed a main effect for sex across both series with males > females. PCA factor, maximum at 336 ms (P3a), showed larger Fz to Pz differential for females than males for both auditory series. Females show a greater differentiation between targets and nontargets in the white noise series, suggesting greater sensitivity to changes in intensity. Interactions involving absolute pitch also appeared in the sensory processing time frames. Although the behavioral measures did not show significant sex differences, the ERP measures did show reliable task-related sex differences.

Absolute pitch and sex affect event-related potential activity for a melodic interval discrimination task

“…Measuring ERPs during a task involving memory for missing and reordered timbres, Hantz et al 43 found that even though the two sexes performed equally well on the task, males had significantly greater late positivity ͑at 675-ms poststimulus onset͒ than females. Females, on the other hand, had a greater anterior to posterior spread of amplitude values than males along the midline at 336 ms for the timbre task, but not for a control condition involving white noise bursts at two different intensity levels.…”

“…The inclusion of sex differences in a study primarily designed to study absolute pitch was motivated largely by our own earlier findings. 43 Marvin 44 has discovered sex differences among trained musicians in the accuracy with which they discriminate among four forms of transformed melodies. Men and women discriminated equally well in the two conditions in which the melodies were played in their original temporal order, but men discriminated significantly better than women in the two conditions in which the melodies were played backward.…”