title: Musical and linguistic expertise influence pre-attentive and attentive processing of non-speech sounds.
abstract: The aim of this experiment was two-fold. Our first goal was to determine whether linguistic expertise influences the pre-attentive [as reflected by the Mismatch Negativity - (MMN)] and the attentive processing (as reflected by behavioural discrimination accuracy) of non-speech, harmonic sounds. The second was to directly compare the effects of linguistic and musical expertise. To this end, we compared non-musician native speakers of a quantity language, Finnish, in which duration is a phonemically contrastive cue, with French musicians and French non-musicians. Results revealed that pre-attentive and attentive processing of duration deviants was enhanced in Finn non-musicians and French musicians compared to French non-musicians. By contrast, MMN in French musicians was larger than in both Finns and French non-musicians for frequency deviants, whereas no between-group differences were found for intensity deviants. By showing similar effects of linguistic and musical expertise, these results argue in favor of common processing of duration in music and speech.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS, Marseille Universities, France. mariec@mcmaster.ca
authors.forename: Céline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marie
authors.forename: Teija
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kujala
authors.forename: Mireille
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Besson
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult