Zhu Jiaqiang, Chen Xiaoxiang, Yang Yuxiao
School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 15;12:611189. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.611189. eCollection 2021.
Music impacting on speech processing is vividly evidenced in most reports involving professional musicians, while the question of whether the facilitative effects of music are limited to experts or may extend to amateurs remains to be resolved. Previous research has suggested that analogous to language experience, musicianship also modulates lexical tone perception but the influence of amateur musical experience in adulthood is poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about how acoustic information and phonological information of lexical tones are processed by amateur musicians. This study aimed to provide neural evidence of cortical plasticity by examining categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese adults with amateur musical experience relative to the non-musician counterparts. Fifteen adult Chinese amateur musicians and an equal number of non-musicians participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. Their mismatch negativities (MMNs) to lexical tones from Mandarin Tone 2-Tone 4 continuum and non-speech tone analogs were measured. It was hypothesized that amateur musicians would exhibit different MMNs to their non-musician counterparts in processing two aspects of information in lexical tones. Results showed that the MMN mean amplitude evoked by within-category deviants was significantly larger for amateur musicians than non-musicians regardless of speech or non-speech condition. This implies the strengthened processing of acoustic information by adult amateur musicians without the need of focused attention, as the detection of subtle acoustic nuances of pitch was measurably improved. In addition, the MMN peak latency elicited by across-category deviants was significantly shorter than that by within-category deviants for both groups, indicative of the earlier processing of phonological information than acoustic information of lexical tones at the pre-attentive stage. The results mentioned above suggest that cortical plasticity can still be induced in adulthood, hence non-musicians should be defined more strictly than before. Besides, the current study enlarges the population demonstrating the beneficial effects of musical experience on perceptual and cognitive functions, namely, the effects of enhanced speech processing from music are not confined to a small group of experts but extend to a large population of amateurs.
在大多数涉及专业音乐家的报告中，音乐对言语处理的影响得到了生动的证明，而音乐的促进作用是仅限于专家还是也可能扩展到业余爱好者的问题仍有待解决。先前的研究表明，与语言经验类似，音乐才能也会调节声调感知，但成年后业余音乐经验的影响却知之甚少。此外，对于业余音乐家如何处理声调的声学信息和音系信息也知之甚少。本研究旨在通过检查有业余音乐经验的中国成年人相对于非音乐家同龄人对声调的范畴知觉，来提供皮质可塑性的神经证据。15名成年中国业余音乐家和同等数量的非音乐家参与了一项事件相关电位（ERP）实验。测量了他们对普通话第二声至第四声连续体的声调以及非言语声调类似物的失匹配负波（MMN）。假设业余音乐家在处理声调的两个信息方面会表现出与非音乐家同龄人不同的MMN。结果表明，无论在言语还是非言语条件下，业余音乐家对类别内偏差诱发的MMN平均幅度均显著大于非音乐家。这意味着成年业余音乐家在无需集中注意力的情况下对声学信息的处理得到了加强，因为对音高细微声学差异的检测有了明显改善。此外，两组中跨类别偏差诱发的MMN峰值潜伏期均显著短于类别内偏差诱发的MMN峰值潜伏期，这表明在注意前阶段，音系信息比声调的声学信息处理得更早。上述结果表明，成年期仍可诱导皮质可塑性，因此对非音乐家的定义应比以前更严格。此外，当前的研究扩大了证明音乐经验对感知和认知功能有益影响的人群范围，即音乐增强言语处理的效果不仅限于一小群专家，还扩展到了大量的业余爱好者。
