| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 理學院科技與數位學習學程 === 107 === Gender differences are often observed in different fields of cognitive research, but there have been few studies on gender differences in musical cognition. Previous studies have demonstrated a female advantage in melody processing, and this could be explained by the female advantage in declarative memory. However, memory is not a unitary system. Working memory also plays an important in our daily life, but it is still unclear whether the female advantage could be extended to melody processing that only requires working memory but not declarative memory. The first purpose of this study was to explore this. The second purpose of this study was to test the gender difference in the relatively unexplored realm in music cognition: rhythm processing. The third purpose of this study was to further explore the differences in the internal processing of melody and rhythm and their relationships with language processing. Previous studies have corroborated the common module between melody and language, but little work had been conducted for the relationship between rhythm and language.
This thesis consists of three studies. The collapsed results of the first and second studies showed no significant gender difference in melody discrimination, but a male advantage in rhythm discrimination. The third study was designed to explore the relationships between melody, rhythm and language processing by means of the dual-task paradigm. The results suggested that the overlap of melody and language was greater than that of rhythm and language. The findings of the three studies can shed light on our understanding of gender differences in rhythm processing in adults, as well as the disassociated internal processing resources of melody and rhythm. The results could provide insights for future research, music education and medical treatments.
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