Musical involvement is often thought of as beneficial in its own right, but recent research suggests that musicians may also benefit in other domains (e.g., linguistic, mathematical, and spatial). One prevalent but unresolved notion is that, due to acoustic similarities between speech prosody and musical melody, musicians are more sensitive to emotion in speech. To assess this notion, 100 university students (mean age = 21.6, SD = 2.0; 75 females and 25 males) were asked to identify the emotion conveyed in semantically neutral utterances and gliding tone analogues preserving the fundamental frequency contour of the utterances. The utterances were produced by female actors with intent to convey either anger, fear, joy, sadness or a neutral emotion. Participants also completed an extended questionnaire about music education and activities (Cuddy, Balkwill, Peretz & Holden, 2005), a battery of tests to assess musical perception and memory (the MBEA; Peretz, Champod & Hyde, 2003), a test of fluid intelligence (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices; Bors & Stokes, 1998), and a test of emotional intelligence (the MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso & Sitarenios, 2003). Consistent with previous research, music training was significantly related to perceptual/memory and fluid intelligence scores. However, contrary to the proposed notion that music training is related to sensitivity to prosody, emotional intelligence scores, not music training, successfully predicted identification of emotion in speech and melodic analogues. The construct of emotional intelligence and implications for both speech and music listening are discussed.
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