title: Musical aptitude and second language pronunciation skills in school-aged children: neural and behavioral evidence.
abstract: The main focus of this study was to examine the relationship between musical aptitude and second language pronunciation skills. We investigated whether children with superior performance in foreign language production represent musical sound features more readily in the preattentive level of neural processing compared with children with less-advanced production skills. Sound processing accuracy was examined in elementary school children by means of event-related potential (ERP) recordings and behavioral measures. Children with good linguistic skills had better musical skills as measured by the Seashore musicality test than children with less accurate linguistic skills. The ERP data accompany the results of the behavioral tests: children with good linguistic skills showed more pronounced sound-change evoked activation with the music stimuli than children with less accurate linguistic skills. Taken together, the results imply that musical and linguistic skills could partly be based on shared neural mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of English, University of Turku, Finland. riia.milovanov@utu.fi
authors.forename: Riia
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Milovanov
authors.forename: Minna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huotilainen
authors.forename: Vesa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Välimäki
authors.forename: Paulo A A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Esquef
authors.forename: Mari
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tervaniemi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001076:Aptitude / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology*; D011581:Psychological Tests; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*