iPost: Musical training makes on a better gesture imitator

	Gesture imitation in musicians and non-musicians Journal Experimental Brain Research Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg ISSN 0014-4819 (Print) 1432-1106 (Online) Category Research Article DOI 10.1007/s00221-010-2322-3 Pages 549-558 Subject Collection Biomedical and Life Sciences SpringerLink Date Wednesday, June 23, 2010	Add to marked items Add to shopping cart Add to saved items Permissions & Reprints Recommend this article

Michael J. Spilka¹ , Christopher J. Steele¹and Virginia B. Penhune¹

(1)	Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal, QC, H4B 1R6, Canada

Received: 14 January 2010  Accepted:30 May 2010  Published online: 24 June 2010

Abstract  

Imitation plays a crucial role in the learning of many complex motor skills. Recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence suggests that the ability to imitate is influenced by past experience, such as musical training. To investigate the impact of musical training on motor imitation, musicians and non-musicians were tested on their ability to imitate videoclips of simple and complex two-handed gestures taken from American Sign Language. Participants viewed a set of 30 gestures, one at a time, and imitated them immediately after presentation. Participants' imitations were videotaped and scored off-line by raters blind to participant group. Imitation performance was assessed by a rating of performance accuracy, where the arm, hand, and finger components of the gestures were rated separately on a 5-point scale (1 = unrecognizable; 5 = exact imitation). A global accuracy score (PAglobal) was calculated by summing the three components. Response duration compared to the model (%MTdiff), and reaction time (RT) were also assessed. Results indicated that musicians were able to imitate more accurately than non-musicians, reflected by significantly higher PAglobal and lower %MTdiff scores. Furthermore, the greatest difference in performance was for the fine-motor (finger) gesture component. These findings support the view that the ability to imitate is influenced by experience. This is consistent with generalist theories of motor imitation, which explain imitation in terms of links between perceptual and motor action representations that become strengthened through experience. It is also likely that musical training contributed to the ability to imitate manual gestures by influencing the personal action repertoire of musicians.

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