Musicianship Influences Language Effect on Musical Pitch Perception

Given its practical implications, the effect of musicianship on language learning has been vastly researched. Interestingly, growing evidence also suggests that language experience can facilitate music perception. However, the precise nature of this facilitation is not fully understood. To address this research gap, I investigated the interactive effect of language and musicianship on musical pitch and rhythmic perception. Cantonese and English listeners, each divided into musician and non-musician groups, completed the Musical Ear Test and the Raven’s 2 Progressive Matrices. Essentially, an interactive effect of language and musicianship was found on musical pitch but not rhythmic perception. Consistent with previous studies, Cantonese language experience appeared to facilitate musical pitch perception. However, this facilitatory effect was only present among the non-musicians. Among the musicians, Cantonese language experience did not offer any perceptual advantage. The above findings reflect that musicianship influences the effect of language on musical pitch perception. Together with the previous findings, the new findings offer two theoretical implications for the OPERA hypothesis—bi-directionality and mechanisms through which language experience and musicianship interact in different domains.

Reproduction Accuracy for Short Rhythms Following Melodic or Monotonic Presentation

Some researchers and study participants have expressed an intuition that novel rhythmic sequences are easier to recall and reproduce if they have a melody, implying that melodicity (the presence of musical pitch variation) fundamentally enhances perception and/or representation of rhythm. But the psychoacoustics literature suggests that pitch variation often impairs perception of temporal information. To examine the effect of melodicity on rhythm reproduction accuracy, we presented simple nine-note auditory rhythms to 100 college students, who attempted to reproduce those rhythms by tapping. Reproductions tended to be more accurate when the presented notes all had the same pitch than when the presented notes had a melody. Nonetheless, a plurality of participants judged that the melodically presented rhythms were easier to remember. We also found that sequences containing a Scotch snap (a sixteenth note at a quarter note beat position followed by a dotted eighth note) were reproduced less accurately than other sequences in general, and less accurately than other sequences containing a dotted eighth note.

Tone–Melody Matching in tone-Language Singing

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.

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

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.

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

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.