Effects of music attrition on linguistic pitch processing

Abstract

Most studies on the relationship between music and language have focused mainly on the lifelong musician, with much less being known about the long-term effect of music on “ex-musicians” – individuals who have ceased musical training and practice. This study thus sought to determine whether transfer benefits of music in linguistic pitch processing persisted in such individuals who experience attrition in their musical skills, and what variables these benefits correlated with. Ten musicians, eleven ex-musicians and ten non-musicians bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese were presented with sentences spoken in French, a language non-native to them. Based on a well-replicated experimental paradigm, the final word of each sentence was parametrically manipulated to create three conditions: prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height), weakly incongruous (+25% pitch increase), and strongly incongruous (+110% pitch increase). Results showed a trend of ex-musicians discriminating subtle pitch violations (+25% pitch increase) better compared to non-musicians, but not as well as compared to musicians. A correlation was observed between this enhanced discrimination and the years since musicians and ex-musicians received musical training. As a whole, the findings suggest that while past musical training may result in enduring linguistic transfer benefits in pitch, this effect fades across time.

Keywords: music attrition, musical training, transfer benefits, pitch processing, second language acquisition