scholarly journals Musicians Detect Pitch Violation in a Foreign Language Better Than Nonmusicians: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 1453-1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Marques ◽  
Sylvain Moreno ◽  
São Luís Castro ◽  
Mireille Besson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Acoustic Parameter ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Musical Expertise ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Better Than

The aim of this study was to determine whether musical expertise influences the detection of pitch variations in a foreign language that participants did not understand. To this end, French adults, musicians and nonmusicians, were presented with sentences spoken in Portuguese. The final words of the sentences were prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height) or incongruous (pitch was increased by 35% or 120%). Results showed that when the pitch deviations were small and difficult to detect (35%: weak prosodic incongruities), the level of performance was higher for musicians than for nonmusicians. Moreover, analysis of the time course of pitch processing, as revealed by the event-related brain potentials to the prosodically congruous and incongruous sentence-final words, showed that musicians were, on average, 300 msec faster than nonmusicians to categorize prosodically congruous and incongruous endings. These results are in line with previous ones showing that musical expertise, by increasing discrimination of pitch—a basic acoustic parameter equally important for music and speech prosody—does facilitate the processing of pitch variations not only in music but also in language. Finally, comparison with previous results [Schön, D., Magne, C., & Besson, M. The music of speech: Music training facilitates pitch processing in both music and language. Psychophysiology, 41, 341–349, 2004] points to the influence of semantics on the perception of acoustic prosodic cues.

scholarly journals Musician Children Detect Pitch Violations in Both Music and Language Better than Nonmusician Children: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Approaches

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyrille Magne ◽  
Daniele Schön ◽  
Mireille Besson
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
Cognitive Domains ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
The Media ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Better Than

The idea that extensive musical training can influence processing in cognitive domains other than music has received considerable attention from the educational system and the media. Here we analyzed behavioral data and recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from 8-year-old children to test the hypothesis that musical training facilitates pitch processing not only in music but also in language. We used a parametric manipulation of pitch so that the final notes or words of musical phrases or sentences were congruous, weakly incongruous, or strongly incongruous. Musician children outperformed nonmusician children in the detection of the weak incongruity in both music and language. Moreover, the greatest differences in the ERPs of musician and nonmusician children were also found for the weak incongruity: whereas for musician children, early negative components developed in music and late positive components in language, no such components were found for nonmusician children. Finally, comparison of these results with previous ones from adults suggests that some aspects of pitch processing are in effect earlier in music than in language. Thus, the present results reveal positive transfer effects between cognitive domains and shed light on the time course and neural basis of the development of prosodic and melodic processing.

Influence of Musical Expertise on Segmental and Tonal Processing in Mandarin Chinese

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2701-2715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Céline Marie ◽  
Franco Delogu ◽  
Giulia Lampis ◽  
Marta Olivetti Belardinelli ◽  
Mireille Besson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Transfer Effects ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Musical Expertise ◽  
Tonal Processing

A same–different task was used to test the hypothesis that musical expertise improves the discrimination of tonal and segmental (consonant, vowel) variations in a tone language, Mandarin Chinese. Two four-word sequences (prime and target) were presented to French musicians and nonmusicians unfamiliar with Mandarin, and event-related brain potentials were recorded. Musicians detected both tonal and segmental variations more accurately than nonmusicians. Moreover, tonal variations were associated with higher error rate than segmental variations and elicited an increased N2/N3 component that developed 100 msec earlier in musicians than in nonmusicians. Finally, musicians also showed enhanced P3b components to both tonal and segmental variations. These results clearly show that musical expertise influenced the perceptual processing as well as the categorization of linguistic contrasts in a foreign language. They show positive music-to-language transfer effects and open new perspectives for the learning of tone languages.

scholarly journals Facial expressions modulate the time course of long latency auditory brain potentials

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Pourtois ◽  
Damien Debatisse ◽  
Paul-Andre Despland ◽  
Beatrice de Gelder
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Long Latency

Morphosyntax, Prosody, and Linking Elements: The Auditory Processing of German Nominal Compounds

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 1647-1668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Koester ◽  
Th. C. Gunter ◽  
S. Wagner ◽  
A. D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Linking Elements ◽  
Nominal Compounds ◽  
Dual Route Model ◽  
Anterior Negativity

The morphosyntactic decomposition of German compound words and a proposed function of linking elements were examined during auditory processing using event-related brain potentials. In Experiment 1, the syntactic gender agreement was manipulated between a determiner and the initial compound constituent (the “nonhead” constituent), and between a determiner and the last constituent (“head”). Although only the head is (morpho)syntactically relevant in German, both constituents elicited a left-anterior negativity if its gender was incongruent. This strongly suggests that compounds are morphosyntactically decomposed. Experiment 2 tested the function of those linking elements which are homophonous to plural morphemes. It has been previously suggested that these indicate the number of nonhead constituents. The number agreement was manipulated for both constituents analogous to Experiment 1. Number-incongruent heads, but not nonhead constituents, elicited an N400 and a subsequent broad negativity, suggesting that linking elements are not processed as plural morphemes. Experiment 3 showed that prosodic cues (duration and fundamental frequency) are employed to differentiate between compounds and single nouns and, thereby, betwen linking elements and plural morphemes. Number-incongruent words elicited a broad negativity if they were produced with a single noun prosody; the same words elicited no event-related potential effect if produced with a compound prosody. A dual-route model can account for the influence of prosody on morphosyntactic processing.

scholarly journals Anticipating Words and Their Gender: An Event-related Brain Potential Study of Semantic Integration, Gender Expectancy, and Gender Agreement in Spanish Sentence Reading

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1272-1288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Y. Y. Wicha ◽  
Eva M. Moreno ◽  
Marta Kutas
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Preceding Article ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
Sentence Meaning ◽  
And Gender

Recent studies indicate that the human brain attends to and uses grammatical gender cues during sentence comprehension. Here, we examine the nature and time course of the effect of gender on word-by-word sentence reading. Event related brain potentials were recorded to an article and noun, while native Spanish speakers read medium to high-constraint Spanish sentences for comprehension. The noun either fit the sentence meaning or not, and matched the preceding article in gender or not; in addition, the preceding article was either expected or unexpected based on prior sentence context. Semantically anomalous nouns elicited an N400. Gender disagreeing nouns elicited a posterior late positivity (P600), replicating previous findings for words. Gender agreement and semantic congruity interacted in both the N400 window—with a larger negativity frontally for double violations—and the P600 window—with a larger positivity for semantic anomalies, relative to the prestimulus baseline. Finally, unexpected articles elicited an enhanced positivity (500–700 msec post onset) relative to expected articles. Overall, our data indicate that readers anticipate and attend to the gender of both articles and nouns, and use gender in real time to maintain agreement and to build sentence meaning.

scholarly journals Children Processing Music: Electric Brain Responses Reveal Musical Competence and Gender Differences

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 683-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Koelsch ◽  
Tobias Grossmann ◽  
Thomas C. Gunter ◽  
Anja Hahne ◽  
Erich Schröger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Process Music ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Brain

Numerous studies investigated physiological correlates of the processing of musical information in adults. How these correlates develop during childhood is poorly understood. In the present study, we measured event-related electric brain potentials elicited in 5and 9-year-old children while they listened to (major–minor tonal) music. Stimuli were chord sequences, infrequently containing harmonically inappropriate chords. Our results demonstrate that the degree of (in) appropriateness of the chords modified the brain responses in both groups according to music-theoretical principles. This suggests that already 5-year-old children process music according to a well-established cognitive representation of the major–minor tonal system and according to music-syntactic regularities. Moreover, we show that, in contrast to adults, an early negative brain response was left predominant in boys, whereas it was bilateral in girls, indicating a gender difference in children processing music, and revealing that children process music with a hemispheric weighting different from that of adults. Because children process, in contrast to adults, music in the same hemispheres as they process language, results indicate that children process music and language more similarly than adults. This finding might support the notion of a common origin of music and language in the human brain, and concurs with findings that demonstrate the importance of musical features of speech for the acquisition of language.

The Effects of Absolute Pitch and Tone Language on Pitch Processing and Encoding in Musicians

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 344-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie A. Hutka ◽  
Claude Alain
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Cumulative Advantage ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to identify or produce a specific pitch without a reference pitch, which appears to be more prevalent in tone-language speakers than non-tone-language speakers. Numerous studies support a close relationship between AP, music, and language. Despite this relationship, the extent to which these factors contribute to the processing and encoding of pitch has not yet been investigated. Addressing this research question would provide insights into the relationship between music and language, as well as the mechanisms of AP. To this aim, we recruited AP musicians and non-AP musicians who were either tone-language (Mandarin and Cantonese) or non-tone language speakers. Participants completed a zero- and one-back working memory task using music and non-music (control) stimuli. In general, AP participants had better accuracy and faster reaction times than participants without AP. This effect remained even after controlling for the age at which participants began formal music lessons. We did not observe a performance advantage afforded by speaking a tone language, nor a cumulative advantage afforded by having AP and being a tone-language speaker.

Same talker, different language

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
VERNA STOCKMAL ◽  
DANNY R. MOATES ◽  
ZINNY S. BOND
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Multidimensional Scaling ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Language Discrimination ◽  
Language Characteristics ◽  
Test Languages ◽  
Better Than

When discriminating between unknown foreign languages, infants, young children, and adult listeners are able to make same-language/different-language discrimination judgments at better than chance levels. In these studies (Lorch & Meara, 1989; Mehler et al., 1988; Stockmal, 1995), foreign language samples have often been provided by different talkers, confounding voice characteristics and language characteristics. In Experiments 1 and 2, using the same talkers for different pairs of languages, we found that listeners were able to discriminate between languages they did not know, even when spoken by the same talker. That is, listeners were able to separate talker from language characteristics. Experiment 3 used multidimensional scaling to explore the bases of listener judgments. Listeners were attentive to prosodic properties and influenced by their familiarity with the test languages.

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