A SPoARC of Music: Musicians Spatialize Melodies but not All‐Comers

Abstract

Recent studies on the spatial positional associated response codes (SPoARC) effect have shown that when Western adults are asked to keep in mind sequences of verbal items, they mentally spatialize them along the horizontal axis, with the initial items being associated with the left and the last items being associated with the right. The origin of this mental line is still debated, but it has been theorized that it necessitates specific spatial cognitive structures to emerge, which are built through expertise. This hypothesis is examined by testing for the first time whether Western individuals spatialize melodies from left to right and whether expertise in the musical domain is necessary for this effect to emerge. Two groups (musicians and non‐musicians) of participants were asked to memorize sequences of four musical notes and to indicate if a subsequent probe was part of the sequence by pressing a “yes” key or a “no” key with the left or right index finger. Left/right‐hand key assignment was reversed at mid‐experiment. The results showed a SPoARC effect only for the group of musicians. Moreover, no association between pitch and hand responses was observed in either of the two groups. These findings suggest a crucial role of expertise in the SPoARC effect.

Spatial-positional association of response codes is modulated by the number of items in working memory

“…This result was obtained using the t-test family of tests, a Type I error of α = .05, a two-sided criterion for detection of a significance, a power of 80%, and an effect size (Cohen's d) superior to .50. Note that this type of effect size is usually reported when a power analysis is done in the domain; e.g., Hartmann et al (2021) reported a Cohen's d = .51 and a Cohen's d = .65; Guida and Porret (2022), reported Cohen's d = .51. A second power analysis showed that a sample of 95 participants was required to reach a power of 80% when running a correlational analysis based on α = .05 and Cohen's d = .28 (as reported by van Dijck et al, 2022, in their correlational analysis).…”