Tonal and segmental perception in native Cantonese-speaking musicians, amateur musicians and non-musicians

Abstract

Tone matching, judgment and segmental judgment tasks conducted in silent reading and listening conditions are devised to test the hypothesis that musical training improves tone and segmental (onset, rime) perception in a tone language, Cantonese, in native Cantonese-speaking individuals. Four-word sequences (in which two words are primes and two are targets, or three words are primes and one is target) were presented to three groups of participants: professional musicians, amateur musicians and non-musicians in the silent reading condition, whereas four sound stimuli of Chinese characters were presented in the listening condition, and their accuracy and response time were recorded. Musicians, both professional and amateur, performed significantly better in tone and segmental perception than their musically naïve counterparts. Moreover, the response time exhibited a contrastive pattern in the two conditions: musicians tended to respond faster in the silent reading condition, but took a longer time in the listening condition. These results clearly demonstrate that musical training facilitated the perceptual processing of Cantonese tone and segmental phonemes by native Cantonese- speakers. Music-to-language transfer effects are highlighted and the non-significant differences exhibited between professional musicians and amateur musicians in five out of six tasks show that musical training need not be pursued to an advanced level for participants to gain perceptual benefits. The results shed light on possible forms of remedial programme development and interventions for children with language disorders such as dyslexia.