Event Abstract

Back to Event

Interactions between musicality and native language for enhanced sound feature processing

Caitlin Dawson1, 2*, Daniel Aalto3, 4, Juraj Simko2, Mari Tervaniemi1, 5 and Martti Vainio2
  • 1 University of Helsinki, Finland
  • 2 University of Helsinki, Finland
  • 3 University of Alberta, Faculty of Rehabilitative Medicine, Canada
  • 4 Misericordia Community Hospital, Canada
  • 5 University of Helsinki, Finland

Research has shown that the brain is plastic to sound environment patterns, in both upper and low-level areas. People who speak languages with lexical tone (e.g. Mandarin) show an enhanced representation of phase and formant structure in the brainstem and enhanced pitch contour representation in the auditory cortex (Bidelman, Gandour & Krishnan, 2011; Chandrasekaran, Krishnan & Gandour, 2009). Our group has recently shown that people who speak quantity languages (e.g. Finnish) that have a lexical contrast in duration have enhanced processing of timing demonstrated by behavioural duration discrimination enhancement, cortical mismatch negativity, and higher auditory brainstem onset response amplitude, reflecting enhanced synchrony of the neural population (Tervaniemi et al., 2006; Dawson et al., 2016). Musicians also have enhanced processing of pitch and representation of harmonics in music and formants in speech, especially in noisy or otherwise challenging conditions (Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010; Schön, Magne & Besson, 2004; Strait & Kraus, 2014; Moreno & Bidelman, 2014; Hutka, Bidelman & Moreno, 2015). However, it is unclear how these enhancements from native language and musical experiences may interact. The current project explores this interaction in Finnish language speakers with a more ecologically valid approach to musicality than typical groups-based analyses: a correlational analysis using the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Müllensiefen et al, 2011) which controls for genre preference, professional/casual practice, and socio-emotional engagement. Behavioural and brainstem electroencephalography data were collected from 48 native Finnish speakers. Four psychometric behavioural tasks found discrimination thresholds for pitch, loudness, and duration, and a complex task tested duration discrimination in a challenging multi-feature stimulus environment. These tests are custom adaptive tests modified from Kaernbach (1991), designed to arrive at an accuracy level of 75%. They are part of a large project investigating behavioral sound feature processing in multiple languages (Simko et al., 2015). Additionally, brainstem onset response latency and amplitude served as a measure of neural synchrony which is enhanced in quantity language speakers and reflects enhanced duration discrimination. Correlations with the general Musical Sophistication Index were tested between seven behavioural factors of interest and brainstem amplitude and latency, as well as between brainstem amplitude and behavioural duration discrimination. The main results were surprising and interesting. More musical Finnish speakers have significantly enhanced behavioural pitch processing, but they did not show enhanced duration processing, and they perform worse as the task becomes more challenging, compared to less musical Finnish speakers. The brainstem data was not correlated to any behavioural results, although this may be because the brainstem comparisons focused on duration processing which was not significantly correlated with musical sophistication. These results can be explained by a ceiling effect caused by language, in that Finnish speakers are already "experts" at duration processing given the requirements of understanding Finnish language, and therefore the relatively weak effect of music cannot further enhance duration. However, lexical pitch is not encoded in Finnish language, so more musical Finnish speakers have gained the benefit of music in their pitch processing. The decrement in performance between simple and complex duration tasks can be explained by processing cost; because pitch processing has become more accurate and automatic in more musical people, it uses neural resources and interferes with the processing of duration. These results are in some opposition to the previous belief that musical training simply enhances all sound processing for everyone, equally, and fits in with very recent research indicating stronger music effects for specific processes that are functioning at a sub-optimal level, such as speech in noise processing in dyslexic children. It also suggests that there may be a language specificity in the pattern of enhancement of sound features, in that the features that are not phonologically encoded in the native language may be more affected by musical experiences and that there is a hierarchy of plastic effects where the phonological properties of native language lay a foundation of subcortical sound feature processing and later experiences with music can modify or "tune" these effects. We are interested to see if the phonological specificity of these language effects follows a predictable pattern in other languages, like Mandarin or English. Previous research, while showing robust results, have not taken into consideration the musical training of tone language speakers. Therefore, the next phase involves conducting these behavioural and brainstem analyses on a population of native Mandarin speakers with different levels of musical sophistication in order to investigate the individual effects of native language phonology and musicality on early auditory plasticity. These results will inform future efforts to improve language skills in populations such as children with listening and language difficulties, speech and hearing therapies, and second language learners.

Acknowledgements

Gratitude to Päivi Virkkunen for help in data collection.

References

Bidelman, G. M., Gandour, J. T., & Krishnan, A. (2011). Cross-domain effects of music and language experience on the representation of pitch in the human auditory brainstem. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(2), 425-434.

Chandrasekaran, B., Krishnan, A., & Gandour, J. T. (2009). Relative influence of musical and linguistic experience on early cortical processing of pitch contours. Brain and language, 108(1), 1-9.

Dawson, C., Aalto, D., Šimko, J., Putkinen, V., Tervaniemi, M., & Vainio, M. (2016). Quantity language speakers show enhanced subcortical processing. Biological Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.06.003

Hutka, S., Bidelman, G. M., & Moreno, S. (2015). Pitch expertise is not created equal: cross-domain effects of musicianship and tone language experience on neural and behavioural discrimination of speech and music. Neuropsychologia, 71, 52-63.

Kaernbach, C. (1991). Simple adaptive testing with the weighted up-down method. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 49(3), 227-229.

Kraus, N., & Chandrasekaran, B. (2010). Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(8), 599-605.

Moreno, S., & Bidelman, G. M. (2014). Examining neural plasticity and cognitive benefit through the unique lens of musical training. Hearing Research, 308, 84-97.

Müllensiefen, D., Gingras, B., Stewart, L., & Musil, J. (2011). The Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI): Technical Report and Documentation v0. 9. London: Goldsmiths, University of London. URL: http://www.gold.ac.uk/music-mind-brain/gold-msi.

Schön, D., Magne, C., & Besson, M. (2004). The music of speech: Music training facilitates pitch processing in both music and language. Psychophysiology, 41(3), 341-349.

Simko, J., Aalto, J., Lippus, P., Włodarczak, M., & Vainio, M. (2015). Pitch, perceived duration and auditory biases: Comparison among languages. In The 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015).

Strait, D. L., & Kraus, N. (2014). Biological impact of auditory expertise across the life span: musicians as a model of auditory learning. Hearing Research, 308, 109-121.

Tervaniemi, M., Jacobsen, T., Röttger, S., Kujala, T., Widmann, A., Vainio, M., Näätänen, R., & Schröger, E. (2006). Selective tuning of cortical sound‐feature processing by language experience. European Journal of Neuroscience, 23(9), 2538-2541.

Keywords: native language, musicality, auditory brainstem, Psychometrics, EEG

Conference: SAN2016 Meeting, Corfu, Greece, 6 Oct - 9 Oct, 2016.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation in SAN2016 Conference

Topic: Posters

Citation: Dawson C, Aalto D, Simko J, Tervaniemi M and Vainio M (2016). Interactions between musicality and native language for enhanced sound feature processing. Conference Abstract: SAN2016 Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2016.220.00068

Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.

The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.

Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.

For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.

Received: 29 Jul 2016; Published Online: 01 Aug 2016.

* Correspondence: Ms. Caitlin Dawson, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, 00100, Finland, caitlin.dawson@helsinki.fi