The influence of musical practice in central auditory processing skills: a systematic review

Abstract

Central Auditory Processing (CAP) skills, and whether the time of exposure to music acts in some way in these skills. Method: The collection of the articles was carried out from the databases PubMed, Science Direct and Lilacs, with the combination of indexed descriptors in the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Selection criteria: Articles were selected in English and Portuguese, published between 2010 and 2016, whose title, or abstract, or work content, were related to the objective of the present study, that is to verify the influence of music in the CAP. The repeated articles and those that did not have the abstract or full text, revision articles, dissertations and theses were excluded. Data analysis: After reading the articles in full, the data were extracted: title, year of publication, country of origin, age and characteristics of the examples, type of study, musicians’ experience time, research objective, CAP skills assessed, results found and conclusion. Results: The research carried out generated a total of 1445 articles, 896 of them were contained in Pubmed, 518 in the base ScienceDirect and 31 in Lilacs. At the end of the analysis the judges selected 17 studies. Conclusion: The articles mentioned demonstrate that the musical practice positively influences the abilities of the CAP. There was no consensus regarding the performance of the exposure time on these skills, but it was shown a better result for individuals with greater musical experience.