Do acoustic illusions exist? Musicians can detect them.

Research from the University of Padua shows that music practice is associated with changes in perceptive mechanisms.

Results of the test phase. (a) Average error percentage and (b) average absolute responses of musicians and
non-musicians in relation to the arrangement of the stimuli (piano notes ordered in one
grouping, ordered in two smaller groups or randomly distributed). On average, non
musicians showed a higher underestimation of 16 piano notes when these were
randomly distributed.

Studying music can influence the development of certain cognitive abilities such as, for example, linguistic, spatial and mathematical skills. Researchers from the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padua had previously documented how prolonged experience in the world of music also influenced the perception of an optical illusion, making the analysis of visual material more accurate compared to people who do not practice instrumental music.

In the new study conducted by Alessandra Pecunioso, Andrea Spoto and Christian Agrillo of the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padua, entitled Investigating acoustic numerosity illusions in professional musicians and published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, the investigation was extended to an illusory category that has been little investigated in the perceptual field: the so-called ‘acoustic illusions’, i.e. groupings of sounds that seem to differ in certain characteristics from the actual physical stimulation.

The researchers asked study participants to estimate the number of notes on a piano in a series of audio…