Response to Creel
Publication information:
Hilton, C. B., Liu, J., Mehr, S. A., & Bergelson, E. (2026). Response to Creel. Current Biology, 36(11). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.007
Abstract
Our original paper found effects of linguistic experience on music perception which generalized across a half-million speakers of fifty-four languages. In a critique, Creel claims that our multilevel modelling approach biased the language-level estimates such that languages with small-sample sizes “spuriously appear to pattern consistently” compared to “raw” sample means. We respectfully disagree and counter this claim here.