Long-term sport participation is associated with a selective auditory-musical performance profile

Recent findings published in Frontiers in Psychology (Vol. 17, 1758520) have revealed that individuals engaged in long-term sport participation exhibit a distinct and selective performance profile in auditory-musical processing, particularly excelling in temporal components such as rhythm and meter. Conducted by researchers Bartłomiej Jacek Swebodziński, K. Korta, and J. Łantowski at the Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, the cross-sectional study investigated whether cognitive and perceptual adaptations traditionally associated with athletic expertise extend beyond the motor domain into the auditory-musical sphere.

While existing literature has extensively documented that athletes possess superior temporal-anticipation, decision-making, and sensorimotor coordination skills compared to non-athletes, the question of whether these advantages generalize to musical perception remained largely unanswered. To address this gap, the researchers utilized the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA)—a standardized diagnostic tool designed to parse distinct components of musical perception and memory—to compare sport-trained individuals against a control group of psychology students.

Methodology and Participant Cohorts

The investigation evaluated a final sample of 83 participants following rigorous data screening. The sport-trained cohort comprised 31 individuals (mean age 29.45 years) recruited from active sports clubs and sport-oriented educational backgrounds. This group demonstrated substantial cumulative experience, averaging 14.26 years of overall sports participation and 9.90 years dedicated to their primary discipline. Disciplines within the cohort were diverse, featuring runners, swimmers, triathletes, dancers, and fitness participants, with over 87% reporting a history of competitive involvement ranging from amateur to professional levels.

The control group consisted of 52 psychology students (mean age 25.96 years) who were selected without regard to athletic specialization. To ensure data integrity, researchers excluded individuals with histories of severe head trauma, surgical intervention, moderate hearing loss, or those failing established MBEA attention-check control trials.

To account for confounding variables known to influence musical processing, the analytical framework employed ordinary least-squares regression models incorporating HC3 heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors. Furthermore, all models adjusted for participant age and years of formal musical education—which was low and balanced across both groups (averaging approximately 3.3 to 3.6 years among the few who reported any training). To control for family-wise error rates across multiple subtests, Holm corrections were applied, and supplementary perceptual sensitivity ($d^prime$) models alongside leave-one-out sensitivity analyses were conducted to verify the stability of the findings.

Core Findings on Overall and Component-Level Performance

The primary hypothesis (H1)—predicting that sport-trained participants would achieve higher overall MBEA scores—was supported by the data. After adjusting for age and formal musical education, the sport-trained group obtained significantly higher Total MBEA scores than the control group ($B = 15.34, p = 0.002$).

However, the researchers emphasized that this aggregate advantage should not be interpreted as a generalized enhancement of all musical faculties. Instead, performance was characterized by a highly selective profile. Aligned with the second hypothesis (H2), sport-trained participants scored significantly higher on the a priori temporal subtests Rhythm ($B = 2.87$, Holm-adjusted $p = 0.030$) and Meter ($B = 3.72$, Holm-adjusted $p = 0.012$).

Exploratory analyses across other subtests revealed a notable group difference in the Memory subtest ($B = 4.20$, Holm-adjusted $p = 0.002$), which assesses the incidental recognition of melodies encountered earlier in the test battery. Conversely, melodic subtests evaluating pitch organization—specifically Scale and Interval—yielded no statistically significant group differences after correction. While an uncorrected advantage appeared for Contour (measuring the directional shape of pitch changes), it failed to remain significant following Holm adjustment and supplementary signal-detection evaluations. Leave-one-out sensitivity testing confirmed that the core effects for Rhythm, Meter, and Memory remained robust across all 83 analytical iterations.

Tenure Analysis and the Question of Cumulative Training

To test whether accumulated experience directly scales with auditory-musical proficiency, the authors evaluated the relationship between sport-participation tenure and MBEA performance within the sport-trained cohort. Contrary to the third hypothesis (H3), overall years of sport participation were not positively associated with Total MBEA performance after controlling for age ($B = -0.78, p = 0.108$).

An exploratory within-group regression even indicated a negative association between participation tenure and Rhythm scores ($B = -0.31, p = 0.002$). The authors cautioned against interpreting this as evidence that sports training degrades rhythmic perception. Instead, they noted that years of participation represent an imprecise proxy for true expertise, failing to capture nuances like training intensity, developmental timing, or specific discipline demands. Crucially, the lack of a positive dose-response curve suggests that the observed group differences cannot be simplistically attributed to the cumulative duration of athletic training.

Theoretical Implications and the Auditory-Motor Interface

The study’s observations provide a compelling framework for discussing the functional overlap between motor expertise and auditory temporal processing. Modern neuroimaging literature indicates that musical rhythm processing heavily engages a bilateral cortico-subcortical network encompassing the superior temporal cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA), putamen, and cerebellum. In particular, internal beat generation and anticipation are tightly linked to basal ganglia and motor-cortical loops, even in the absence of overt physical movement.

Although the study did not directly measure sensorimotor synchronization or neural coupling, the alignment between sports training—which demands rapid temporal anticipation, rhythmic coordination, and action-timing under pressure—and heightened auditory temporal performance supports the concept of shared underlying timing mechanisms.

The unexpected finding regarding incidental recognition memory (Memory) also aligns with broader perceptual-cognitive research in sports science. Expertise frameworks frequently highlight superior pattern recognition, contextual anticipation, and implicit structural learning as hallmarks of skilled athletes. The current data suggest that sport participation may be linked to more efficient incidental encoding or retention of structured sequential information, opening new avenues for cross-modal cognitive research.

Limitations and Future Directions

The authors acknowledged several key methodological limitations. Foremost, the cross-sectional design precludes definitive causal claims. It remains unclear whether long-term sports participation actively induces adaptations in temporal and memory processing, or whether individuals possessing pre-existing cognitive strengths in these areas are naturally drawn to, and persist within, demanding athletic disciplines.

Additional constraints included the relatively small and heterogeneous nature of the sport-trained sample, which encompassed diverse disciplines ranging from endurance sports like running and swimming to aesthetic and combat pursuits. Furthermore, remote administration via digital platforms prevented the strict environmental standardization possible in traditional laboratory settings.

Future research will need to implement longitudinal designs tracking individuals prior to and throughout structured athletic development to disentangle selection effects from training-induced plasticity. Incorporating precise physiological metrics, such as neuroimaging of auditory-motor coupling and direct psychophysical assessments of duration discrimination and beat perception, will be vital to validating these cross-domain interactions.

The study protocol, data sets, and supplementary analysis materials have been made publicly available via Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23134827). The research received ethical approval from the Ethical Board for Scientific Research at the Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.