TY - JOUR
T1 - Syntactic and non-syntactic sources of interference by music on language processing
AU - Fiveash, Anna
AU - McArthur, Genevieve
AU - Thompson, William Forde
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES), awarded to A.F., and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant (DP130101084) awarded to W.F.T. Thank you to Glenn Schellenberg for valuable Discussions and comments on an earlier version of this manuscript, Bob Slevc for insightful Discussions about the results, and Aniruddh Patel for valuable Discussions of the results and for suggesting the melodic complexity analysis. We would also like to thank the reviewers for constructive and valuable comments on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Music and language are complex hierarchical systems in which individual elements are systematically combined to form larger, syntactic structures. Suggestions that music and language share syntactic processing resources have relied on evidence that syntactic violations in music interfere with syntactic processing in language. However, syntactic violations may affect auditory processing in non-syntactic ways, accounting for reported interference effects. To investigate the factors contributing to interference effects, we assessed recall of visually presented sentences and word-lists when accompanied by background auditory stimuli differing in syntactic structure and auditory distraction: melodies without violations, scrambled melodies, melodies that alternate in timbre, and environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, one-timbre melodies interfered with sentence recall, and increasing both syntactic complexity and distraction by scrambling melodies increased this interference. In contrast, three-timbre melodies reduced interference on sentence recall, presumably because alternating instruments interrupted auditory streaming, reducing pressure on long-distance syntactic structure building. Experiment 2 confirmed that participants were better at discriminating syntactically coherent one-timbre melodies than three-timbre melodies. Together, these results illustrate that syntactic processing and auditory streaming interact to influence sentence recall, providing implications for theories of shared syntactic processing and auditory distraction.
AB - Music and language are complex hierarchical systems in which individual elements are systematically combined to form larger, syntactic structures. Suggestions that music and language share syntactic processing resources have relied on evidence that syntactic violations in music interfere with syntactic processing in language. However, syntactic violations may affect auditory processing in non-syntactic ways, accounting for reported interference effects. To investigate the factors contributing to interference effects, we assessed recall of visually presented sentences and word-lists when accompanied by background auditory stimuli differing in syntactic structure and auditory distraction: melodies without violations, scrambled melodies, melodies that alternate in timbre, and environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, one-timbre melodies interfered with sentence recall, and increasing both syntactic complexity and distraction by scrambling melodies increased this interference. In contrast, three-timbre melodies reduced interference on sentence recall, presumably because alternating instruments interrupted auditory streaming, reducing pressure on long-distance syntactic structure building. Experiment 2 confirmed that participants were better at discriminating syntactically coherent one-timbre melodies than three-timbre melodies. Together, these results illustrate that syntactic processing and auditory streaming interact to influence sentence recall, providing implications for theories of shared syntactic processing and auditory distraction.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058741885&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-018-36076-x
DO - 10.1038/s41598-018-36076-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 30559400
AN - SCOPUS:85058741885
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 8
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
IS - 1
M1 - 17918
ER -