Behavioral and online statistical learning in children with musical training

Objectives: Objective: Statistical learning (SL) is an implicit ability to extract statistical cues from continuous stream of stimuli. This study compared behavioural and online (electrophysiological) measures of SL in children with and without musical training. Material and methods: SL of regularities embedded in auditory and visual stimuli was measured in musically trained and age-matched untrained children (9–11 years). ERPs were recorded as children listened to pure tones or watched cartoon figures. Results: Grand-averaged ERPs showed that initial stimulus elicited larger responses in the musically trained children for both auditory and visual online tasks. Music skills were associated with performance on auditory and visual SL tasks. Conclusions: Our data suggests that auditory skills such as rhythm perception might facilitate detection of regularities in children