1. Effects of Musical Experience on Learning Lexical Tone Categories
1pSC10
Effects of Musical Experience on Learning Lexical Tone Categories
Tian (Christina) Zhao1,2 & Patricia K. Kuhl1,2
1. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195
2. Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, WA,, 98195
Introduction
Method
Participants
Native Mandarin Speakers
(C, n=10)
English Speaking Musicians
(M, n=20)
English Speaking Nonmusicians
(NM, n=20)
Stimuli (More in Poster session 2pSC9)
Training Stimuli: Natural productions from 5 female native Mandarin speakers reading syllables in Tone 2 and 3
Testing Stimuli: fitted 6th polynomial functions on Tone 2 and Tone 3 data to create a 9 step continuum (Figure 1)
Procedure
Time 1: Cs, Ms and NMs’ music/pitch ability and perception of the tone continuum measured by
Wing’s Standardized Test of Musical Intelligence
AXB identification task
AX discrimination task
Time 2: Half of the Ms and NMs were assigned to a 8-session perceptual training procedure (Wayland & Li, 2008)
Two-alternative forced choice identification (ID)
Categorical same/difference discrimination (CD)
Time 3: All Ms and NMs’ perception of the tone
continuum were measured again
AXB identification + AX discrimination
Original Stimuli, New Syllable Generalization, New
Syllable/New Talker Generalization
Background
Formation of robust phoneme categories is crucial in second language acquisition
Musicians exhibit advantages in foreign lexical tone perception (Alexander, Wong, & Bradlow, 2005; Besson, Schon, Moreno, Santos, & Magne, 2007; Chandrasekaran, Krishnan, & Gandour, 2009; Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees, & Kraus, 2007).
Highly variable stimuli improve the training effect in adults’ perception of foreign phonetic contrasts (Logan, Lively, & Pisoni, 1991).
Research Questions
Do musicians learn foreign lexical tone categories better than nonmusicians?
Are there differential learning effects when generalizing to new stimuli (new syllable, new syllable/new speaker)?
Figure 1
Pre-Training
Post-Training
Identification
Discrimination
Identification
Discrimination
Training
Main Effect (Pre vs Post): F(1,1)=20.1, p=0.000
Main Effect (Pre vs Post): F(1,1)=36.00, p=0.000
Perceptual Training
Both Ms and NMs showed significant improvement over time (p=0.001 for 2AFC ID, p=0.003 for Categorical Discrimination)
No significant difference between the two training groups
Main Effect (Pre vs Post): F(1,1)=17.78, p=0.000
Interaction (Training vs Control * Pre vs Post): F(1,1)=5.10, p=0.03
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
Ms demonstrated an advantage in lexical tone perception due to better acuity in pitch processing
However, Ms and NMs rely on the same bottom-up processing strategy, while Cs rely on long-term category representations
No strategy change observed in post-test even though significant improvement observed over time
We speculate a reorientation of attention underlies the improvement in post-test
Some evidence showing that training benefitted NMs more than Ms compared to their control counterparts (need further investigation)
Potential future directions
Neural correlates underlying the different processing strategies
What does it take to achieve a shift in strategy in processing foreign phonetic contrast?
Longer exposure time?
Higher level of motivation?
Introducing other
dimensions to help
categorization
(e.g. voice quality)?
More social experience
(Kuhl, Tso & Liu, 2003;
Kuhl, 2007)?
Results: Pre-Training
AXB Identification
Slope: Cs were significantly higher than NMs
but not Ms (F (2,47)=4.860, p=0.012)
Intercept: No difference among groups
AX Discrimination
Cs showed differential sensitivity across the continuum, as well as an effect of stimulus presentation order (Chen & Kager, 2011, Figure 2)
Both Ms and NMs showed constant sensitivity across the continuum
Ms showed the highest sensitivity (p<0.001)
Tone perception in relation to musical pitch ability
No correlation in the Cs
Pitch ability predicted AXB slope and AX sensitivity in NMs (p=0.005, p=0.034)
Pitch ability predicted AX sensitivity in Ms (p=0.051)
Post-training
Significant improvements in both identification and discrimination tasks were observed in training and control groups, suggesting improvement due to task repetition
Significant interactions were observed with the new syllable/new speaker generalization tasks
No differential sensitivity along the continuum in the discrimination task observed
Correlations between pitch task performance and post-training slope and overall sensitivity remain significant
Figure 2
References
Alexander, J. A., Wong, P. C. M., & Bradlow, A., R. (2005). Lexical Tone Perception in Musicians and Non-musicians. Paper presented at the Eurospeech — 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology. Besson, M., Schon, D., Moreno, S., Santos, A., & Magne, C. (2007). Influence of musical expertise and musical training on pitch processing in music and language. [Article]. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 25(3-4), Chen, A., & Kager, R. (2011). THE PERCEPTION OF LEXICAL TONES AND TONE SANDHI IN L2:SUCCESS OR FAILURE? ICPhS XVII, HONG KONG 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. doi: /j.bandl Kuhl, P. K. ,Tsao, F-M. & Liu, H-M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of National Science Academy, 100 (15), Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning ‘gated’ by the social brain? Developmental Science, 10 (1), Logan, J. S., Lively, S. E., & Pisoni, D. B. (1991). TRAINING JAPANESE LISTENERS TO IDENTIFY ENGLISH /R/ AND /1/ - A 1ST REPORT. [Article]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89(2), Wayland, R. P., & Li, B. (2008). Effects of two training procedures in cross-language perception of tones. Journal of Phonetics, 36(2), doi: /j.wocn Wong, P. C. M., Skoe, E., Russo, N. M., Dees, T., & Kraus, N. (2007). Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns. Nature Neuroscience, 10(4), doi: /nn1872
Acknowledgement
Professor Richard Wright, Professor Steven Demorest and Professor Lynn Werner for very helpful advise
MCCL (Laboratory for Music Cognition, Culture and Learning) for help recruiting musicians
I-LABS (Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences) members
All the patient subjects
Work supported by the NSF LIFE Science of Learning Center (SMA ) and the Developing Mind Project.