The modulating effect of musical expertise on lexical‐semantic prediction in speech‐in‐noise comprehension: Evidence from an EEG study

Abstract Musical expertise has been proposed to facilitate speech perception and comprehension in noisy environments. This study further examined the open question of whether musical expertise modulates high‐level lexical‐semantic prediction to aid online speech comprehension in noisy backgrounds. Musicians and nonmusicians listened to semantically strongly/weakly constraining sentences during EEG recording. At verbs prior to target nouns, both groups showed a positivity‐ERP effect ( Strong vs. Weak ) associated with the predictability of incoming nouns; this correlation effect was stronger in musicians than in nonmusicians. After the target nouns appeared, both groups showed an N400 reduction effect ( Strong vs. Weak ) associated with noun predictability, but musicians exhibited an earlier onset latency and stronger effect size of this correlation effect than nonmusicians. To determine whether musical expertise enhances anticipatory semantic processing in general, the same group of participants participated in a control reading comprehension experiment. The results showed that, compared with nonmusicians, musicians demonstrated more delayed ERP correlation effects of noun predictability at words preceding the target nouns; musicians also exhibited more delayed and reduced N400 decrease effects correlated with noun predictability at the target nouns. Taken together, these results suggest that musical expertise enhances lexical‐semantic predictive processing in speech‐in‐noise comprehension. This musical‐expertise effect may be related to the strengthened hierarchical speech processing in particular.