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

Marques, Catarina; Moreno, Sylvain; Castro, São Luís; Besson, Mireille

doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.9.1453

Cited by 230 publications

(209 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Our finding that musicians show increased sensitivity to stress contrasts in a foreign language (the English-like nonwords they were presented with) is consistent with the fact that musicians are more sensitive than nonmusicians to pitch variations in intonation contours for a foreign language that they do not understand (Marques, Moreno, Castro, & Besson, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Music Training Facilitates Lexical Stress Processing

et al. 2009

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WE INVESTIGATED WHETHER MUSIC TRAINING facilitates the processing of lexical stress in natives of a language that does not use lexical stress contrasts. Musically trained (musicians) or untrained (nonmusicians) French natives were presented with two tasks: speeded classification that required them to focus on a segmental contrast and ignore irrelevant stress variations, and sequence repetition involving either segmental or stress contrasts. In the latter situation, French natives are usually "deaf " to lexical stress, but this was less the case for musicians, demonstrating that music expertise enhances sensitivity to stress contrasts. This increased sensitivity does not seem, however, to unavoidably bias musicians' attention to stress contrasts: in segmental-based speeded classification, musicians were not more affected than nonmusicians by irrelevant stress variations when overall performance was controlled for. Implications regarding both the notion of modularity of processing and the advantage that musicianship may afford for second language learning are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Music Training Facilitates Lexical Stress Processing

et al. 2009

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“…This enhanced neural representation of the auditory signal may facilitate learning a new language, a skill in which bilinguals outperform monolinguals (46). Indeed, musicians, who show neural enhancements similar to bilinguals, also appear to be better able to detect acoustic cues in foreign speech relative to nonmusicians (32,45,47).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subcortical encoding of sound is enhanced in bilinguals and relates to executive function advantages

Krizman

Marian

Shook

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

237

226

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Bilingualism profoundly affects the brain, yielding functional and structural changes in cortical regions dedicated to language processing and executive function [Crinion J, et al. (2006) Science 312:1537–1540; Kim KHS, et al. (1997) Nature 388:171–174]. Comparatively, musical training, another type of sensory enrichment, translates to expertise in cognitive processing and refined biological processing of sound in both cortical and subcortical structures. Therefore, we asked whether bilingualism can also promote experience-dependent plasticity in subcortical auditory processing. We found that adolescent bilinguals, listening to the speech syllable [da], encoded the stimulus more robustly than age-matched monolinguals. Specifically, bilinguals showed enhanced encoding of the fundamental frequency, a feature known to underlie pitch perception and grouping of auditory objects. This enhancement was associated with executive function advantages. Thus, through experience-related tuning of attention, the bilingual auditory system becomes highly efficient in automatically processing sound. This study provides biological evidence for system-wide neural plasticity in auditory experts that facilitates a tight coupling of sensory and cognitive functions.

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“…linguistic pitch discrimination (Marques, Moreno, Castro & Besson, 2007;Lee & Hung, 2008;Cooper & Wang, 2012), segmental and tonal processing (Marie, Delogu, Lampis, Belardinelli & Besson, 2011), and congruous prosody discrimination (Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees & Kraus, 2007). Similar studies were conducted with babies and children who received musical training before taking a language test in contrast with a control group (Magne, Schön & Besson, 2006;Forgeard, Schlaug, Norton, Rosam, Iyengar & Winner, 2008;Moreno, Marques, Santos, Castro & Besson, 2009;Chobert, Clément, Velay & Besson, 2012;François, Chobert, Besson & Schön, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pronunciation proficiency and musical aptitude in Spanish as a foreign language: results of an experimental research project

Vangehuchten

Verhoeven

Thys

2015

Rev. lingüíst. leng. apl.

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This paper examines the correlation between musical aptitude and pronunciation proficiency in an experiment with 29 university students of Spanish as a foreign language. The 29 participants took a test in Spanish pronunciation and prosody as well as in musicality. The pronunciation and prosody test consisted of two parts. The first part was a receptive phonemic discrimination test and the second part was a productive test in which they had to repeat words and sentences chosen for their prosodic characteristics. The musical aptitude test also consisted of a receptive part on musicality in general, as well as a productive part, which included the reproduction of tones, tone intervals, rhythms and the singing of a melody. The statistical analysis with Pearson's correlation-coefficients revealed a positive correlation (although not for all aspects) between the musical and foreign language pronunciation proficiency aptitudes. The results are commented on in the discussion. Relevant teaching implications are included in the conclusion.Keywords: pronunciation and prosody proficiency in a second/foreign language, musical aptitude, Spanish as a second/foreign language research, experimental research, Spanish as a second/foreign language teaching.

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

Cited by 230 publications

References 50 publications

Music Training Facilitates Lexical Stress Processing

Music Training Facilitates Lexical Stress Processing

Subcortical encoding of sound is enhanced in bilinguals and relates to executive function advantages

Pronunciation proficiency and musical aptitude in Spanish as a foreign language: results of an experimental research project

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