Music and speech prosody: a common rhythm

Abstract

Disorders of music and speech perception, known as amusia and aphasia, have traditionally been regarded as dissociated deficits based on studies of brain damaged patients. This has been taken as evidence that music and speech are perceived by largely separate and independent networks in the brain. However, recent studies of congenital amusia have broadened this view by showing that the deficit is associated with problems in perceiving speech prosody, especially intonation and emotional prosody. In the present study the association between the perception of music and speech prosody was investigated with healthy Finnish adults (n = 61) using an on-line music perception test including the Scale subtest of Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) and Off-Beat and Out-of-key tasks as well as a prosodic verbal task that measures the perception of word stress. Regression analyses showed that there was a clear association between prosody perception and music perception, especially in the domain of rhythm perception. This association was evident after controlling for music education, age, pitch perception, visuospatial perception, and working memory. Pitch perception was significantly associated with music perception but not with prosody perception. The association between music perception and visuospatial perception (measured using analogous tasks) was less clear. Overall, the pattern of results indicates that there is a robust link between music and speech perception and that this link can be mediated by rhythmic cues (time and stress).

The perception of prosody and associated auditory cues in early-implanted children: The role of auditory working memory and musical activities

“…Ciocca et al, 2002;Green et al, 2004;Laneau et al, 2004). The fi ndings of better F0 discrimination in the CIm group in turn echo the fi ndings in NH listeners participating in musical training (Micheyl et al, 2006;Hausen et al, 2013). Duration discrimination varied only slightly between groups, and, as in other The pattern of results for forward digit span broadly showed the same effects of hearing status and music experience as seen with F0 discrimination, with the CIn group performing less well than the NH and CIm group, although the latter difference was signifi cant only at the 2nd measurement point, while the CIm group performed equivalently to the NH group.…”

“…KISsankello " or " KISsan KELlo " (English translation " BLUebell " or " BLUe BEll " ) (Vogel & Raimy, 2002;O ' Halpin, 2010;Hausen et al, 2013). Responses were made by pointing at a picture representing the object.…”

“…Musical activities have been shown to enhance a range of speech perceptual skills in normally-developing children, affecting not only prosodic perception, but also the perception of vowel duration, voice onset time and pitch, speech segmentation, and phonological awareness (Hausen et al, 2013). These experimental studies appear to show enhancements attributable to musical training rather than to genetic or environmental factors (Besson et al, 2011).…”

Voice emotion perception and production in cochlear implant users

“…Longitudinal musical training studies consistently suggest that music training provides speech-related benefits, such as phonological awareness, perception of vowel duration, and speech segmentation, to NH listeners (Hausen, et al, 2013; Degé & Schwarzer, 2011) and benefits in melodic and pitch perception to CI users (Chen et al, 2010; Galvin, et al, 2007). Torppa et al (2014) found that CI children participating in music or dance activities over a period of 16 months performed similarly to NH children in tasks of pitch discrimination and word stress perception, whereas CI children participating in non-musical tasks over the course of the study performed more poorly.…”

Perspectives on the rhythm–grammar link and its implications for typical and atypical language development

“…This interpretation assumes some degree of domain-general rhythm, in which musical rhythm and speech prosody use shared cognitive resources 74,75 and individual differences in domain-rhythm skills account for language outcomes. The literature to date has not yet differentiated whether shared mechanisms for rhythm and grammar connections are bolstered also by underlying differences in auditory working memory 76 or hierarchical processing, 57 as suggested by our findings of an association between music rhythm skills and complex syntax.…”