Department of Speech and Hearing Science and Chronic Brain Injury Program.
Department of Neuroscience.
Dev Psychol. 2020 Sep;56(9):1632-1641. doi: 10.1037/dev0000969. Epub 2020 Jul 23.
Scholars debate whether musical and linguistic abilities are associated or independent. In the present study, we examined whether musical rhythm skills predict receptive grammar proficiency in childhood. In Experiment 1, 7- to 17-year-old children ( = 68) were tested on their grammar and rhythm abilities. In the grammar-comprehension task, children heard short sentences with subject-relative (e.g., "Boys are nice") or object-relative (e.g., "Boys are nice") clauses, and determined the gender of the individual performing the action. In the rhythm-discrimination test, children heard two short rhythmic sequences on each trial and decided if they were the same or different. Children with better performance on the rhythm task exhibited higher scores on the grammar test, even after holding constant age, gender, music training, and maternal education. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding with another group of same-age children ( = 96) while further controlling for working memory. Our data reveal, for the first time, an association between receptive grammar and rhythm perception in typically developing children. This finding is consistent with the view that music and language share neural resources for rule-based temporal processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
学者们争论音乐能力和语言能力是否相关或独立。在本研究中，我们考察了音乐节奏技能是否能预测儿童时期的接受性语法能力。在实验 1 中，7 至 17 岁的儿童（n=68）接受了语法和节奏能力的测试。在语法理解任务中，儿童听到带有主语关系从句（例如，“男孩们很好”）或宾语关系从句（例如，“男孩们很好”）的短句，并确定执行动作的个体的性别。在节奏辨别测试中，儿童在每次试验中听到两个短的节奏序列，并判断它们是否相同或不同。在节奏任务中表现更好的儿童在语法测试中得分更高，即使在控制年龄、性别、音乐训练和母亲教育程度后也是如此。在实验 2 中，我们在另一组同龄儿童（n=96）中复制了这一发现，同时进一步控制了工作记忆。我们的数据首次揭示了典型发展儿童中接受性语法和节奏感知之间的关联。这一发现与音乐和语言共享基于规则的时间处理的神经资源的观点一致。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。
