TY - JOUR
T1 - Syntactic processing in music and language: Effects of interrupting auditory streams with alternating timbres
AU - Fiveash, Anna
AU - Thompson, William Forde
AU - Badcock, Nicholas A.
AU - McArthur, Genevieve
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES), awarded to the first author (allocation number 2013087 ), and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant ( DP130101084 ) awarded to the second author.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Music and language both rely on the processing of spectral (pitch, timbre) and temporal (rhythm) information to create structure and meaning from incoming auditory streams. Behavioral results have shown that interrupting a melodic stream with unexpected changes in timbre leads to reduced syntactic processing. Such findings suggest that syntactic processing is conditional on successful streaming of incoming sequential information. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether (1) the effect of alternating timbres on syntactic processing is reflected in a reduced brain response to syntactic violations, and (2) the phenomenon is similar for music and language. Participants listened to melodies and sentences with either one timbre (piano or one voice) or three timbres (piano, guitar, and vibraphone, or three different voices). Half the stimuli contained syntactic violations: an out-of-key note in the melodies, and a phrase-structure violation in the sentences. We found smaller ERPs to syntactic violations in music in the three-timbre compared to the one-timbre condition, reflected in a reduced early right anterior negativity (ERAN). A similar but non-significant pattern was observed for language stimuli in both the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and the left anterior negativity (LAN) ERPs. The results suggest that disruptions to auditory streaming may interfere with syntactic processing, especially for melodic sequences.
AB - Music and language both rely on the processing of spectral (pitch, timbre) and temporal (rhythm) information to create structure and meaning from incoming auditory streams. Behavioral results have shown that interrupting a melodic stream with unexpected changes in timbre leads to reduced syntactic processing. Such findings suggest that syntactic processing is conditional on successful streaming of incoming sequential information. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether (1) the effect of alternating timbres on syntactic processing is reflected in a reduced brain response to syntactic violations, and (2) the phenomenon is similar for music and language. Participants listened to melodies and sentences with either one timbre (piano or one voice) or three timbres (piano, guitar, and vibraphone, or three different voices). Half the stimuli contained syntactic violations: an out-of-key note in the melodies, and a phrase-structure violation in the sentences. We found smaller ERPs to syntactic violations in music in the three-timbre compared to the one-timbre condition, reflected in a reduced early right anterior negativity (ERAN). A similar but non-significant pattern was observed for language stimuli in both the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and the left anterior negativity (LAN) ERPs. The results suggest that disruptions to auditory streaming may interfere with syntactic processing, especially for melodic sequences.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85047642500&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.05.003
DO - 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.05.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 29750978
AN - SCOPUS:85047642500
SN - 0167-8760
VL - 129
SP - 31
EP - 40
JO - International Journal of Psychophysiology
JF - International Journal of Psychophysiology
ER -