From Psychoacoustics to Brain Waves: A Longitudinal Approach to Novel Word Learning

Abstract

Musical expertise has been shown to positively influence high-level speech abilities such as novel word learning. This study addresses the question whether low-level enhanced perceptual skills causally drives successful novel word learning. We used a longitudinal approach with psychoacoustic procedures to train 2 groups of nonmusicians either on pitch discrimination or on intensity discrimination, using harmonic complex sounds. After short (app. 3 hr) psychoacoustic training, discrimination thresholds were lower on the specific feature (pitch or intensity) that was trained. Moreover, compared to the intensity group, participants trained on pitch were faster to categorize words varying in pitch. Finally, although the N400 components in both the word learning phase and in the semantic task were larger in the pitch group than in the intensity group, no between-group differences were found at the behavioral level in the semantic task. Thus, these results provide mixed evidence that enhanced perception of relevant features through a few hours of acoustic training with harmonic sounds causally impacts the categorization of speech sounds as well as novel word learning. These results are discussed within the framework of near and far transfer effects from music training to speech processing.

Effects of Psychoacoustic Training on the Pre-Attentive Processing of Harmonic Sounds and Syllables

“…Results in these attentive tasks showed that participants were faster to categorize Thai monosyllabic words based on pitch after than before frequency training, with no significant differences after intensity training. Participants trained in frequency also made significantly fewer errors than participants trained in intensity when deciding that picture-word pairs matched or mismatched previously learned associations (Barbaroux et al, 2021). Therefore, in line with the bottom-up hypothesis described in the introduction, these results provided evidence that short-term psychoacoustic training with harmonic sounds positively impacted higher level of speech categorization and the learning of new associations when attention is focused on the task.…”

“…Following these tasks, participants were involved in a novel word learning phase and in matching and semantic tasks to determine whether frequency training positively influenced semantic processing (see Figure 1). These results are reported in Barbaroux et al (2021).…”

“…Psychoacoustics. The psychoacoustical procedure to measure acoustic thresholds based on the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) method is described in detail in Barbaroux et al (2021). Discrimination thresholds were measured using a two-interval, two-alternative forcedchoice procedure with complex sounds.…”

“…Overall, results showed that relatively short-term music training, ranging from a few weeks to 2 or 3 years, has a positive influence on several aspects of speech processing at both the behavioral and neural levels (see Besson et al, 2017, for review;Degé & Schwarzer, 2011;Flaugnacco et al, 2015;Frey et al, 2019;Gordon et al, 2015;Habib et al, 2016;Jentschke & Koelsch, 2009;Linnavalli et al, 2018;Moreno et al, 2015;Nan et al, 2018). Therefore, these longitudinal studies, together with experiments in which mediation analyses, are used to test for causality (Barbaroux et al, 2021;Baron & Kenny, 1986;Foncubierta et al, 2020;Gomez-Dominguez et al, 2019), provided strong evidence that music training is the cause of the facilitatory effects observed at various levels of speech processing.…”

Musical hearing and the acquisition of foreign-language intonation

“…That said, we found no significant relationship between participants' intonation scores and the Tonedeaf Test results. It should be noted that the results of both tests may differ from other musical hearing tests conducted on a wider population (see e.g., Barbaroux et al, 2020 for French non-musicians) as they usually differ across cultures and sample sizes. The tests used in this study were also recently used in other studies (Ning, 2020;Palomar-García et al, 2020), where Vietnamese learners of Mandarin scored comparably to the Polish speakers comprising our sample.…”