Tone Language Speakers and Musicians Share Enhanced Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities for Musical Pitch: Evidence for Bidirectionality between the Domains of Language and Music

Infants and children are able to track statistical regularities in perceptual input, which allows them to acquire structural aspects of language and music, such as syntax. However, much more is known about the development of linguistic compared to musical syntax. In the present study, we examined 3.5-year-olds’ implicit knowledge of Western musical pitch structure using electroencephalography (EEG). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while children listened to chord sequences that either 1) followed Western harmony rules, 2) ended on a chord that went outside the key, or 3) ended on an in-key but less expected chord harmonically. Whereas adults tend to show an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) in response to unexpected chords (Koelsch, 2009), 3.5-year-olds in our study showed an immature response that was positive rather than negative in polarity. Our results suggest that very young children exhibit implicit knowledge of the pitch structure of Western music years before they have been shown to demonstrate that knowledge in behavioral tasks.

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Cross-domain effect of pitch processing in lexical and melodic contexts reflected by non-musicians: An MEG study

10.37716/hbab.2020010701 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 85-90

Author(s):

Zhaowei Liu ◽

◽

Yun Nan ◽

Lingxi Lu ◽

Wei Cui ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Music Training ◽

Pitch Processing ◽

Cross Domain ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Language And Music ◽

Perceptual Abilities ◽

Cortical Regions ◽

Brain Behavior

The pitch processing of language and music is generally considered engaging overlapped neural correlates. Previous studies on musicians showed that the ability of pitch processing in music could be transferred to language. It is known that music training can facilitate neural processing of speech, however, the underlying neural mechanisms of pitch processing of language and music are not fully understood, especially in non-musicians. Using magnetoencephalography, we presented a pitch anomaly paradigm which consists of language/music phrases ending in either congruous or incongruous tones/pitches to non-musicians. We found the distinctive brain activity patterns in two groups with high and low musical pitch perceptual abilities. The brain-behavior results showed a positive correlation between the performance of musical pitch tasks and the activation of the left frontotemporal cortical regions elicited by lexical tones. Our results suggested that the cross-domain effect of language and music could be generalized to people without formal music training.

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Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch

Brain and Cognition ◽

10.1016/j.bandc.2011.07.006 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 77 (1) ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 95

Author(s):

Gavin M. Bidelman ◽

Jackson T. Gandour ◽

Ananthanarayan Krishnan

Keyword(s):

Tone Language ◽

Musical Pitch

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Simultaneous bilinguals who do not speak a tone language show enhancement in pitch sensitivity but not in executive function

Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism ◽

10.1075/lab.19037.liu ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Liquan Liu ◽

Ao Chen ◽

René Kager

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Language Processing ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Music Perception ◽

Pitch Perception ◽

First Year ◽

Lexical Tone ◽

Enhanced Sensitivity ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Tone Discrimination

Abstract Previous studies have reported perceptual advantages, such as when discriminating non-native linguistic or musical pitch differences, among first-year infants growing up in bilingual over monolingual environments. It is unclear whether such effects should be attributed to bilinguals’ enhanced perceptual sensitivity and/or cognitive abilities, and whether such effects would extend to adulthood. Twenty-four Dutch, 24 Dutch simultaneous bilingual (DSB), and 24 Chinese Mandarin speakers were examined by three sets of tasks assessing their linguistic pitch and music perception, executive function, as well as interactions across these modalities. Results showed degrees of advantages for DSB and Chinese participants’ over their Dutch peers in lexical tone discrimination and pitch-related music tasks. In tasks related to executive function, no difference was observed between DSB and Dutch participants, while Chinese participants’ performances were modulated by cognitive interference of language processing. Findings suggest that listeners’ enhanced sensitivity to linguistic and musical pitch may stem from acoustic (DSB) and experience (Chinese) rather than cognitive factors. Moreover, Dutch participants showed robust correlations between their linguistic and musical pitch perception, followed by limited correlations in DSB, and virtually no correlation among Chinese participants, illustrating how distinct language experiences can lead to specific pitch perception patterns between language and music.

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Speaking a tone language enhances musical pitch perception in 3-5-year-olds

Developmental Science ◽

10.1111/desc.12503 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. e12503 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Sarah C. Creel ◽

Mengxing Weng ◽

Genyue Fu ◽

Gail D. Heyman ◽

Kang Lee

Keyword(s):

Pitch Perception ◽

Tone Language ◽

Musical Pitch

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Tone language experience modulates the effect of long-term musical training on musical pitch perception

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America ◽

10.1121/1.5049365 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 144 (2) ◽

pp. 690-697 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Xiuli Tong ◽

William Choi ◽

Yuen Ying Man

Keyword(s):

Musical Training ◽

Pitch Perception ◽

Language Experience ◽

Tone Language ◽

Musical Pitch

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Tone–Melody Matching in tone-Language Singing

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198832232.013.47 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 675-688

Author(s):

D. Robert Ladd ◽

James Kirby

Keyword(s):

Recent Literature ◽

Good Deal ◽

Text Setting ◽

Tone Language ◽

Important Principle ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Pitch Direction ◽

The Subject ◽

Musical Genres ◽

Pitch Movement

Singing in tone languages has been the subject of a good deal of research, which shows that text-setting constraints are the heart of the solution to respecting both the linguistic and the musical functions of pitch. The most important principle in maintaining intelligibility of song texts seems to be the avoidance of contrary settings: musical pitch movement up or down from one syllable to the next should not be the opposite of the linguistically specified pitch direction. This chapter reviews the variations on this theme that have been described in the recent literature, including differences between languages and musical genres. It briefly considers how tonal text-setting might be incorporated into a general theory that includes traditional European metrics.

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Feeling the Beat in an African Tone Language: Rhythmic Mapping Between Language and Music

Frontiers in Communication ◽

10.3389/fcomm.2021.653747 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Author(s):

Kathryn H. Franich ◽

Ange B. Lendja Ngnemzué

Keyword(s):

Text Setting ◽

Metrical Structure ◽

Musical Rhythm ◽

Tone Language ◽

Tone Languages ◽

Bantu Language ◽

Grassfields Bantu ◽

Language And Music ◽

Data Source ◽

Stem Position

Text-setting patterns in music have served as a key data source in the development of theories of prosody and rhythm in stress-based languages, but have been explored less from a rhythmic perspective in the realm of tone languages. African tone languages have been especially under-studied in terms of rhythmic patterns in text-setting, likely in large part due to the ill-understood status of metrical structure and prosodic prominence asymmetries in many of these languages. Here, we explore how language is mapped to rhythmic structure in traditional folksongs sung in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. We show that, despite complex and varying rhythmic structures within and across songs, correspondences emerge between musical rhythm and linguistic structure at the level of stem position, tone, and prosodic structure. Our results reinforce the notion that metrical prominence asymmetries are present in African tone languages, and that they play an important coordinative role in music and movement.

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Refining our understanding of the “elephant in the room”

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x20000096 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Andrew Whiten

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Cultural Evolution ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Critical Factors ◽

Technological Culture

Abstract The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.

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