Effect of musical experience on learning lexical tone categories

J Acoust Soc Am. 2015 Mar;137(3):1452-63. doi: 10.1121/1.4913457.

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that musicians show an advantage in processing and encoding foreign-language lexical tones. The current experiments examined whether musical experience influences the perceptual learning of lexical tone categories. Experiment I examined whether musicians with no prior experience of tonal languages differed from nonmusicians in the perception of a lexical tone continuum. Experiment II examined whether short-term perceptual training on lexical tones altered the perception of the lexical tone continuum differentially in English-speaking musicians and nonmusicians. Results suggested that (a) musicians exhibited higher sensitivity overall to tonal changes, but perceived the lexical tone continuum in a manner similar to nonmusicians (continuously), in contrast to native Mandarin speakers (categorically); and (b) short-term perceptual training altered perception; however, there were no significant differences between the effects of training on musicians and nonmusicians.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Adult
  • Audiometry, Speech
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Learning*
  • Male
  • Memory
  • Music*
  • Phonetics
  • Pitch Discrimination*
  • Sound Spectrography
  • Speech Acoustics*
  • Speech Perception*
  • Time Factors
  • Voice Quality*
  • Young Adult