Vocal emotion recognition: A comparison of singers and instrumentalists, amateurs and professionals

Musicians outperform non-musicians in vocal emotion recognition (VER), presumably due to differences in auditory sensitivity. However, the current literature is inconclusive regarding differential effects of specific types of musical activity. Therefore, we compared emotion recognition performance of singers (<i>N</i> = 45) vs. instrumentalists (<i>N</i> = 43) and professional musicians (<i>N</i> = 40) vs. amateurs (<i>N</i> = 88) vs. non-musicians (<i>N</i> = 38), based on short vocal utterances expressing happiness, pleasure, fear, or sadness. Using both frequentist and Bayesian inference, we found the predicted null effects for singers vs. instrumentalists, and professionals vs. amateurs. Evidence for an advantage in amateurs vs. non-musicians was inconclusive. Across groups, we replicated the consistent link between VER and auditory sensitivity. Overall, the current work aligns with the perspective that musicians' advantage in recognizing vocal emotions is rooted in auditory sensitivity, rather than specific types of musical activities or formal training.