Effects Of Music Training On Speech Processing Of Native Speakers In Mandarin

Music and speech share many sound attributes.Pitch,as the percept of fundamental frequency,often occupies the center of the researchers’ attention in studies on the relationship between speech and music.One widely held assumption is that music training may confer an advantage in speech tone processing.The cross–domain effects of musical training on non–tonal language speakers’ linguistic pitch processing have been proved.However,it remains unclear whether musical training improves the processing of lexical tone for native tone language speakers who actually use lexical tones in their daily communication.The present study explore the Mandarin tone processing in sublexical level and lexical level which conducted two event–related potential(ERP)experiments that recruited Mandarin musician and non–musician participants and adopted two experimental paradigms,passive oddball paradigm and semantic violation paradigm.Experient 1 revealed that musicians demonstrated enlarged electrical responses to lexical tone changes as reflected by the increased P3 a.Experiment 2 showed that the average amplitude of N400 evoked by the deviations caused by the tone change was significantly different in the left hemisphere between musicians and non–musicians.The N400 amplitude of musicians was larger than that of non–musicians.This study show that music training promotes the improvement of tone processing of Mandarin speakers in both the sublexical and the lexcial level.