Journal article
Are lexical tones musical? Native language’s influence on neural response to pitch in different domains
Brain and Language, Vol.180-182, pp.31-41
2018
PMID: 29689493
Abstract
Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces.
Details
- Title
- Are lexical tones musical? Native language’s influence on neural response to pitch in different domains
- Authors
- Ao Chen (Author) - Utrecht UniversityVarghese Peter (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityFrank Wijnen (Author) - Utrecht UniversityHugo Schnack (Author) - Utrecht UniversityDenis Burnham (Author) - Western Sydney University
- Publication details
- Brain and Language, Vol.180-182, pp.31-41
- Publisher
- Academic Press
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.bandl.2018.04.006
- ISSN
- 1090-2155
- PMID
- 29689493
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99518706302621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Audiology & Speech-language Pathology
- Linguistics
- Neurosciences
- Psychology, Experimental
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Source: InCites