Fig. 5: Objective measure of musical ability is related to self-reported musical training.

Musicians had significantly better melody discrimination than non-musicians [t(160) = 10.32, p < 0.0001, one-tailed test, CI [0.774, ∞], d = 1.63] (a), and this finding generalized across the full cohort of participants when treating years of formal musical training as a continuous variable (r = 0.476, p < 0.0001, one-tailed test, CI [0.399, 1]) (b). Black outlines: 1D KDEs; Diamonds: Average data; Circles: Individual data; NMus: Non-musician (white); Mus: Musician (dark blue). Participants in neither of the strictly defined groups are shown in light blue. Error bars: ±1 SEM.