title: Listeners feel the beat: entrainment to English and French speech rhythms.
abstract: Can listeners entrain to speech rhythms? Monolingual speakers of English and French and balanced English-French bilinguals tapped along with the beat they perceived in sentences spoken in a stress-timed language, English, and a syllable-timed language, French. All groups of participants tapped more regularly to English than to French utterances. Tapping performance was also influenced by the participants' native language: English-speaking participants and bilinguals tapped more regularly and at higher metrical levels than did French-speaking participants, suggesting that long-term linguistic experience with a stress-timed language can differentiate speakers' entrainment to speech rhythm.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Pascale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lidji
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Peretz
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Morningstar
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D009146:Music; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult