Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2010 Mar 31;5(3):e9889. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009889.
Language and music, two of the most unique human cognitive abilities, are combined in song, rendering it an ecological model for comparing speech and music cognition. The present study was designed to determine whether words and melodies in song are processed interactively or independently, and to examine the influence of attention on the processing of words and melodies in song. Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data were recorded while non-musicians listened to pairs of sung words (prime and target) presented in four experimental conditions: same word, same melody; same word, different melody; different word, same melody; different word, different melody. Participants were asked to attend to either the words or the melody, and to perform a same/different task. In both attentional tasks, different word targets elicited an N400 component, as predicted based on previous results. Most interestingly, different melodies (sung with the same word) elicited an N400 component followed by a late positive component. Finally, ERP and behavioral data converged in showing interactions between the linguistic and melodic dimensions of sung words. The finding that the N400 effect, a well-established marker of semantic processing, was modulated by musical melody in song suggests that variations in musical features affect word processing in sung language. Implications of the interactions between words and melody are discussed in light of evidence for shared neural processing resources between the phonological/semantic aspects of language and the melodic/harmonic aspects of music.
语言和音乐是人类两种最独特的认知能力，而歌曲将这两者结合在一起，使其成为比较言语和音乐认知的生态模型。本研究旨在确定歌曲中的词和旋律是相互作用还是独立处理的，并研究注意力对歌曲中词和旋律处理的影响。当非音乐家聆听以四种实验条件呈现的成对的唱词（启动词和目标词）时，记录了事件相关的脑电位（ERPs）和行为数据：同词同调；同词异调；异词同调；异词异调。参与者被要求关注词或旋律，并执行相同/不同的任务。在这两个注意任务中，不同的词目标都引起了 N400 成分，这与之前的结果预测相符。最有趣的是，不同的旋律（用相同的词演唱）引起了 N400 成分，随后是正后电位。最后，ERP 和行为数据的一致性表明，唱词的语言和旋律维度之间存在相互作用。在歌曲中，语义处理的标志 N400 效应受到音乐旋律的调制，这表明音乐特征的变化会影响歌唱语言中的词处理。鉴于语言的语音/语义方面和音乐的旋律/和声方面之间存在共享神经处理资源的证据，讨论了词和旋律之间相互作用的意义。
