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The Effects Of Musical Training On Categorical Perception Of Speech In 4-to 5-year-old Preschoolers

Posted on:2021-04-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y YaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1485306458477264Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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With the development of cognitive science,it has become one of the research hotspots to reveal the effects of musical training on speech learning.At present,more and more studies show that music training and speech learning share many perceptual and cognitive processes,and music training can promote the development of speech learning.Categorization is a prominent feature of speech perception,which reflects the refinement process of children’s speech processing ability.Perception of Mandarin tones and voice onset time(VOT)is categorical in Mandarin-speaking children,and their categorical perception(CP)ability refines with age before 7 years old.There is neurophysiological evidence that musical training can improve the sensitivity of typical tones in 4-to 5-year-old preschoolers at suprasegmental level.However,the effects of musical training on CP of lexical tone in preschoolers has not been confirmed by behavioral studies.At the segmental level,the influence of temporal processing experience acquired by musical training on CP of VOT has not been reported in Mandarin-speaking children either.In this dissertation,therefore,a12-month musical training was given to 4-to 5-year-old preschoolers to investigate the facilitative effects of musical training,different training programs and training duration on CP of Mandarin tones and VOT,so as to provide a new and valuable theoretical and empirical basis for studying the impacts of music training on speech learning.The research objectives of this dissertation are as follows: First,it is to investigate the effects of musical training on music sound processing in the music domain,and CP of Mandarin tones and VOT in speech domain in 4-to 5-year-old preschoolers;Second,it is to verify whether the abilities of processing frequency and temporal information in music domain can be transferred to speech domain and promote CP of Mandarin tones and VOT;Third,it is to verify the theoretical assumptions of shared sound category learning mechanism hypothesis(SSCLMH),precise auditory timing hypothesis(PATH)and OPERA theory.In order to achieve the above objectives,the current dissertation proposed the following three general questions: 1)What are the effects of musical training on CP of Mandarin tones and VOT in preschoolers? Are these effects closely related to their music sound processing abilities under music condition? 2)What are the impacts of various music training programs(pitch-based or rhythm-based)on CP of Mandarin tones and VOT in preschoolers? Are these impacts transferred across domains from individual abilities to process music pitch or temporal cues? 3)How does the training duration contribute to CP of Mandarin tones and VOT in preschoolers? Does it take a relatively long-term training session to generate the significant effects of musical training?In this dissertation,sixty-one children aged 4-5 years old were assigned randomly to carillon group,drum group and control group.With the design of pretest,middle-test and posttest,the two musically-trained groups received pitch-based training(carillon playing)or rhythm-based training(drum beating)three times a week,40 minutes each time,and the control group carried out handcraft activities simultaneously.Three experiments were included: tests of the sound processing under music condition,CP of lexical tones and VOT under speech condition before the onset of study,after 6-month and 12-month training or activities.Results of the music sound processing experiment showed that before training and after 6-month training,there was no significant difference in various music sound processing abilities among the three testing groups.However,after 12-month training,the overall musical abilities in carillon group and drum group were significantly better than control group,and there was no significant difference between the two musically-trained groups.These results indicated that long-term musical training,being pitch-based and rhythm-based,could enhance preschoolers’ overall abilities to process music sounds.Furthermore,pitch perception and song singing scores in the carillon group were significantly higher than those in the drum group and the control group,and both music groups performed much better than the control group in beat synchronization tests,demonstrating that pitch-based training enhanced preschoolers’ sensitivity to music pitch and temporal information,while rhythm-based training only improved their abilities to process temporal cues in music.Results of CP of lexical tones in speech domain revealed that before training and after 6-month training,there was no significant group difference in the boundary position and boundary width in identification task,nor in the within-category and between-category discrimination accuracy in discrimination task.But after 12 months of training,the mean boundary width in the carillon group was significantly narrower than that in the drum group and the control group,and its within-category discrimination accuracy was prominently higher than that in the other two groups.There was no significant difference between the drum group and the control group in the performance of identification and discrimination tasks in all the probe assessments.These results showed that pitch-based training raised the steepness of boundary width and enhanced children’s sensitivity to subtle pitch differences of within-category sounds.However,rhythm-based training didn’t improve preschoolers’ CP of lexical tones at the suprasegmental level.In addition,results of correlation analyses indicated that after 12-month musical training,the reduction of boundary width value in carillon group was positively correlated with the improvement of pitch perception and song singing in music measurements,but such kind of correlation in the drum group and the control group was not significant.Hence,it is concluded that long-term and continuous pitch-based training could help preschoolers improve the processing of frequency information across music and speech,and musicians’ cross-domain advantages of pitch processing could be demonstrated early in the preschool period.Results of CP of VOT showed that before training and after 6-month training,there was no difference in the boundary position,width values,within-category or between-category discrimination accuracy among three groups.After 12 months of training,the boundary width in both carillon group and drum group were significantly narrower than those in the control group,and there was no significant difference between these two musically trained groups,showing that both pitch-based training and rhythm-based training enhanced 4-to 5-year-old preschoolers’ refined abilities to deal with temporal information in speech.The results of correlation analyses revealed that the decreased boundary width in the carillon group and the drum group were positively correlated with the improvement of beat synchronization performance in music measurements after 12 months of training,yet the correlation was not significant in the control group.Therefore,it is summarized that long-term musical training promoted 4-to 5-year-old preschoolers to generalize the benefits of temporal processing in music domain to speech domain,so as to help them to improve CP of VOT.Combined with results of the three experiments,the following conclusions are drawn: in response to the first question,musical training can improve not only CP of lexical tones at suprasegmental level,but also CP of VOT at segmental level.What’s more important is that such effects are closely related to the development of children’s abilities to process sounds under music condition.In answer to the second question,different training programs affect the training effects.The acquired abilities to process pitch and temporal information through pitch-based training program benefit CP of Mandarin tones and VOT.The acquired abilities to process temporal information through rhythm-based training program help to improve CP of VOT in preschoolers.For the third question,training duration also contributes to the training effects.That is,12-month musical training not only raise preschoolers’ sound processing abilities in music,but also the degree of CP of speech sounds in preschoolers.However,such advantage is not observed right after 6-month training.This evidence suggested that the cross-domain transfer of music training benefit CP of speech sounds,but relatively long-term training sessions should be required.All in all,the findings of the current dissertation supported the theoretical hypothesis of SSCLMH in a way that musical training promoted speech development,and pitch processing abilities improved by musical training predicted the degree of CP of lexical tones.Furthermore,the present findings were also in line with the theoretical hypothesis of PATH that rhythm-based training had an impact on the temporal cues processing at the segment level,and there was a link between synchronization ability and CP of VOT in preschoolers.In addition,the results validated the OPERA theory of music training at both suprasegmental and segmental levels.Musical training,especially musical instrument playing,involved the interaction among multiple sensory channels,which enhanced children’s processing of acoustic features in music and speech domains,contributing to the development of children’s auditory perception ability in early childhood.Given that music training required more precise sound representation,more repetition,stronger expression of emotion and more attention,it can improve speech processing abilities in preschoolers.Since the effects of musical training didn’t appear after 6-month training,the results of this dissertation supplemented the theoretical hypothesis of OPERA and proposed that the musical training for preschoolers should be long-term and continuous so as to enhance the degree of CP of Mandarin tones and VOT.Despite the limitations of the current dissertation,it is confirmed that the 12 months of longitudinal study made very important contribution to laying a foundation for the further application of musical training in early education and medical rehabilitation.This dissertation can be taken as an important step in the endeavor of understanding how long-term and continuous musical training,especially the specific instrument performance,promotes auditory and speech development in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers.
Keywords/Search Tags:categorical perception of speech, Mandarin tones, voice onset time, musical training, cross-domain transfer
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