The linguistic benefits of musical abilities.
Growing evidence points to a link between musical abilities and certain phonetic and prosodic skills in language. However, the mechanisms that underlie these relations are not well understood. A recent study by Wong et al. suggests that musical training sharpens the subcortical encoding of linguistic pitch patterns. We consider the implications of their methods and findings for establishing a link between musical training and phonetic abilities more generally.
Patel
Aniruddh D
AD
The Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. apatel@nsi.edu
Iversen
John R
JR
D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D009146:Music; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology