To date, numerous studies have investigated the relation between musical abilities and speech prosody perception. Many studies show enhanced prosody perception, e.g. [1], which can be explained as a between‑domain transfer of skills due to partly overlapping neural networks for speech and music [2]. Investigating a potential connection to L2 prosody can contribute to knowledge on individual differences in L2 acquisition and use, but this remains under‑researched [3]. Furthermore, to what extent any music‑related enhancements of prosody perception contribute to L2 processing remains unexplored.
Our study therefore investigated the influence of 45 Dutch adults' musical abilities on focus processing in their L2 English. In Dutch and English, contrastive focus is signalled by a pitch accent. Native listeners use this cue to anticipate upcoming information [4]. Eye-tracking evidence suggests Dutch L2 English users have difficulty using prosodic cues for anticipation [5], possibly due to differences between Dutch and English focus cues and higher demands on processing resources. In our study, we used a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to investigate the role of musical abilities. Participants viewed images (Figure 1) and listened to sentences where only associates with the word that receives a focus accent, e.g. I only gave a SPOON to the girl, I didn't give a FORK to the girl. We analysed fixations to determine whether participants anticipated the upcoming alternative (fork) after participants heard the focus accent on spoon. Participants also completed the Short‑PROMS music perception test [6]. We tested the influence of PROMS scores on focus-related fixations.
Initial analyses using linear regression models indicate that individuals with stronger musical abilities show more correct anticipatory fixations, indicating a faster interpretation of focus-marking pitch accents during L2 speech processing. This may provide a foundation for further research on the role of musical abilities in L2 phonological processing and L2 speech production.
Figure 1. Visual display.
References
[1] C. Marques, S. Moreno, S. L. Castro, and M. Besson, "Musicians detect pitch violation in a foreign language better than nonmusicians: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence," J. Cogn. Neurosci., vol. 19, no. 9, pp. 1453–1463, 2007.
[2] A. D. Patel, "Can nonlinguistic musical training change the way the brain processes speech? The expanded OPERA hypothesis," Hear. Res., vol. 308, pp. 98-108.
[3] N. Jansen, E. Harding, H. Loerts, D. Başkent, and W. Lowie, "The relation between musical ability and sentence-level intonation perception: A meta-analysis comparing L1 and non-native listening," Proc. Speech Prosody 2022, 713-717.
[4] M. Perdomo and E. Kaan, "Prosodic cues in second-language speech processing: A visual world eye-tracking study," Second. Lang. Res., vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 349-375, 2019.
[5] H. Ge, I. Mulders, X. Kang, A. Chen, and V. Yip, "Processing focus in native and non-native speakers of English: An eye-tracking study in the visual world paradigm," Appl. Psycholinguist., vol. 42, pp. 1057–1088, 2021.
[6] M. Zentner and H. Strauss, "Assessing musical ability quickly and objectively: Development and validation of the Short‐PROMS and the Mini‐PROMS," Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., vol. 1400, no. 1, pp. 33-45, 2017.
