The Role of Native Language and the Fundamental Design of the Auditory System in Detecting Rhythm Changes

Abstract

Purpose We investigated whether rhythm discrimination is mainly driven by the native language of the listener or by the fundamental design of the human auditory system and universal cognitive mechanisms shared by all people irrespective of rhythmic patterns in their native language. Method In multiple experiments, we asked participants to listen to 2 continuous acoustic sequences and to determine whether their rhythms were the same or different (AX discrimination). Participants were native speakers of 4 languages with different rhythmic properties (Spanish, French, English, and German) to understand whether the predominant rhythmic patterns of a native language affect sensitivity, bias, and reaction time in detecting rhythmic changes in linguistic (Experiment 2) and in nonlinguistic (Experiments 1 and 2) acoustic sequences. We examined sensitivity and bias measures, as well as reaction times. We also computed Bayes factors in order to assess the effect of native language. Results All listeners performed better (i.e., responded faster and manifested higher sensitivity and accuracy) when detecting the presence or absence of a rhythm change when the 1st stimulus in an AX test pair exhibited regular rhythm (i.e., a syllable-timed rhythmic pattern) than when the 1st stimulus exhibited irregular rhythm (i.e., stress-timed rhythmic pattern). This result pattern was observed both on linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli and was not modulated by the native language of the participant. Conclusion We conclude that rhythm change detection is a fundamental function of a processing system that relies on general auditory mechanisms and is not modulated by linguistic experience.

The effect of regular rhythm on the perception of linguistic and non‐linguistic auditory input

“…In line with this, Ordin et al. (2019) showed that in AX discrimination experiments, regular rhythm in the A stimulus (first stimulus in a stimulus pair) led to faster and more accurate responses, regardless of whether the X stimulus (second stimulus in a stimulus pair) was rhythmically similar to or different from the A stimulus. They suggested that rhythmic regularity in the first stimulus enhances attention and thus results in better performance.…”

Speech Rhythm Convergence as a Social Coalition Signal

“…The sequences were paired into test stimuli, with a 1-s pause between the paired sequences. The pause duration was chosen based on Ordin, Polyanskaya, Gomez, and Samuel (2019) , who used a 1-s pause between stimuli with either similar or different rhythms in an AX rhythm discrimination experiment. We created 30 stimuli with paired sequences exhibiting Type A meter and 30 stimuli with paired sequences with Type B meter, that is, 60 stimuli with similar meter in both sequences.…”