It is well-known that with studying music and playing musical instruments, human motoric skills, as well as skills outside music, like attention, memory and control of body functions, improve. Studies also indicate that musicians are better at multitasking, even at activities which are not primarily musical. Learning to play a musical instrument also has an effect on brain neuroplasticity - a physical change in the arrangement of neurons in brains, which also affects other aspects of living.
Playing a musical instrument shares many similarities with driving a car. The goal of this diploma thesis is to find out whether and how skills necessary for playing a musical instrument affect driving ability. Recently, there is an increase in driving simulation aids, which allow for quick, standardized and ecological testing of driving skill. Nevertheless, all studies, which compared skills of musicians compared to non-musicians, studied skills not directly connected to driving.
We used a driving simulator experiment to compare reaction times of ten musicians to a control group of ten non-musicians in different scenarios - reaction time based on signal light, cognitive reaction time, acoustic reaction time and reaction time based on peripheral vision. We compared means of reaction times between groups of musicians and non-musicians, and divided reaction time into thinking time and movement time (time for moving the foot to the brake pedal).
Results uncover differences in reaction times of musicians, whose mean reaction times were lower. The greatest difference between the groups was measured in the cognitive reaction time. When we further divided reaction time into thinking time and movement time, it was evident that musicians were faster in the thinking time rather than moving the foot. However, a drummer in the musician group showed significantly lower movement times than the other musicians, as well as the control group.
Statistically, there were no significant differences between the groups, which was expected due to the small sample size. Therefore, our findings were similar to some former studies, whereas we used dedicated driving simulation equipment for measuring driving skills.
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