The Influence of Music Training and Bilingualism on Speech and Music Perception

This case study investigates the role that bilingualism and/or music training plays on the pitch perception of non-native speech and musical pitch contrasts in 6- to 7-year-old children. This study aimed to investigate two research questions. First, does the infant bilingual advantage in pitch perception persist through childhood? Second, does music training lead to an advantage in pitch perception? There were 4 participants with the following criteria: a monolingual non-musician, monolingual musician, bilingual non-musician, and a bilingual musician. The participants performed a series of perception tasks, including English minimal pairs, Mandarin pitch contrasts, and violin pitch contrasts. It was found that the musician participants outperformed the non-musician participants. In addition, the bilingual musician participant outperformed the bilingual non musician participant. The results of this study serve as preliminary evidence that there is an advantage in pitch perception abilities in children with the presence of music training. While bilingualism alone did not point to an advantage, there was a notable advantage with the presence of bilingualism and music training

Pitch and Rhythm Discrimination in Musicians and Dancers with Implications for Language Aptitude

Musicians acquire musical skills (i.e., pitch and rhythm discrimination) from music education. Research indicates musical skills can transfer to and assist learning in non-arts domains, including language learning. Like musicians, dancers also acquire musical skills in dance education through embodied cognitive processes. However, few or no researchers have investigated the musical skills attained from dance education and considered how these musical skills might interact with language aptitude. Therefore, in this study, 72 undergraduate and graduate music (n = 37) and dance majors (n = 35) were evaluated and compared in pitch and rhythm discrimination scores in the Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (AMMA) aptitude test. Participants were also administered a survey to collect data on their demographics and music, dance, and language experience. The study results suggest that music majors may be superior in pitch and rhythm discrimination compared to dance majors, and that there is no difference between dance majors and non-music majors in pitch and rhythm discrimination. Additional findings suggest that bilingual/multilingual music and dance majors may be superior in pitch discrimination compared to monolingual music and dance majors; however, no difference was found in rhythm discrimination between these two groups. Finally, results also suggest that tonal language-speaking music and dance majors may be superior in pitch and rhythm discrimination compared to non-tonal language-speaking music and dance majors

Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants

This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8–9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants’ heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions

Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants

This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8-9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants’ heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions

Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants

This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8–9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants’ heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions

Neuroplasticity, neural reuse, and the language module

What conception of mental architecture can survive the evidence of neuroplasticity and neural reuse in the human brain? In particular, what sorts of modules are compatible with this evidence? I aim to show how developmental and adult neuroplasticity, as well as evidence of pervasive neural reuse, forces us to revise the standard conception of modularity and spells the end of a hardwired and dedicated language module. I argue from principles of both neural reuse and neural redundancy that language is facilitated by a composite of modules (or module-like entities), few if any of which are likely to be linguistically special, and that neuroplasticity provides evidence that (in key respects and to an appreciable extent) few if any of them ought to be considered developmentally robust, though their development does seem to be constrained by features intrinsic to particular regions of cortex (manifesting as domain-specific predispositions or acquisition biases). In the course of doing so I articulate a schematically and neurobiologically precise framework for understanding modules and their supramodular interactions

Literatura y música en José Manuel Caballero Bonald

La apasionante relación entre la literatura y la música nos desvela un vínculo ancestral. A lo largo de este trabajo de tesis abordamos los límites que aúnan y separan a la literatura de la música a través de la obra literaria de José Manuel Caballero Bonald. Desde una perspectiva comparada e interdisciplinar estudiamos el diálogo entre las artes a partir de su pensamiento estético y filosófico, los rasgos musicales de su poética y la presencia de la música en su obra. En líneas generales tratamos de demostrar la solvencia de los estudios músico-literarios como método de análisis para los textos literarios y de arrojar algo de claridad a las imprecisas fronteras simbólicas del universo musical que encierran. La trayectoria de un poeta melómano, de un refinado oído musical manifiesto en cada uno de los libros que ha publicado, se presenta como un espacio idóneo para abordar las diversas cuestiones que plantea esta moderna rama de estudios y para poner de relevancia las relaciones intersemióticas de dos géneros artísticos tan íntimamente emparentados