Research article summary (published 30 Jul 2009):

Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers.

Full Abstract

Individuals differ markedly with respect to how well they can imitate pitch through singing and in their ability to perceive pitch differences. We explored whether the use of pitch in one's native language can account for some of the differences in these abilities. Results from two studies suggest that individuals whose native language is a tone language, in which pitch contributes to word meaning, are better able to imitate (through singing) and perceptually discriminate musical pitch. These findings support the view that language acquisition fine-tunes the processing of critical auditory dimensions in the speech signal and that this fine-tuning can be carried over into nonlinguistic domains.

Author information

Author/s: Pfordresher, Peter Q (PQ); Brown, Steven (S);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, 355 Park Hall, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA. pqp(-atsign-)buffalo.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Attention, perception & psychophysics (Atten Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Aug; vol 71 (issue 6) : pp 1385-98

Dates: Created 2009/07/27; Completed 2009/10/20;

PMID: 19633353, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/20/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent Adult Attention Female Humans Imitative Behavior Language Male Multilingualism

Multilingualism Music Pitch Discrimination Sound Spectrography Speech Acoustics Speech Perception Verbal Behavior Voice Quality Young Adult

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