Columbia Business School, Columbia University, 665 W 130th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA; Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, 417 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 300 George Street #900, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; School of Psychology, University of Auckland, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
Curr Biol. 2023 May 22;33(10):1916-1925.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.067. Epub 2023 Apr 26.
Tonal languages differ from other languages in their use of pitch (tones) to distinguish words. Lifelong experience speaking and hearing tonal languages has been argued to shape auditory processing in ways that generalize beyond the perception of linguistic pitch to the perception of pitch in other domains like music. We conducted a meta-analysis of prior studies testing this idea, finding moderate evidence supporting it. But prior studies were limited by mostly small sample sizes representing a small number of languages and countries, making it challenging to disentangle the effects of linguistic experience from variability in music training, cultural differences, and other potential confounds. To address these issues, we used web-based citizen science to assess music perception skill on a global scale in 34,034 native speakers of 19 tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin, Yoruba). We compared their performance to 459,066 native speakers of other languages, including 6 pitch-accented (e.g., Japanese) and 29 non-tonal languages (e.g., Hungarian). Whether or not participants had taken music lessons, native speakers of all 19 tonal languages had an improved ability to discriminate musical melodies on average, relative to speakers of non-tonal languages. But this improvement came with a trade-off: tonal language speakers were also worse at processing the musical beat. The results, which held across native speakers of many diverse languages and were robust to geographic and demographic variation, demonstrate that linguistic experience shapes music perception, with implications for relations between music, language, and culture in the human mind.
声调语言与其他语言的区别在于其使用音高（声调）来区分单词。长期使用和听到声调语言的经历被认为是以超出语言音高感知的方式塑造听觉处理能力，从而推广到音乐等其他领域的音高感知。我们对之前测试这一观点的研究进行了荟萃分析，发现有中等强度的证据支持这一观点。但是，之前的研究受到样本量小的限制，代表了少数几种语言和国家，难以将语言经验的影响与音乐训练、文化差异和其他潜在混淆因素区分开来。为了解决这些问题，我们使用基于网络的公民科学，在全球范围内评估了 34,034 名 19 种声调语言（如普通话、约鲁巴语）母语者的音乐感知技能。我们将他们的表现与 459,066 名其他语言的母语者进行了比较，包括 6 种声调重音语言（如日语）和 29 种非声调语言（如匈牙利语）。无论参与者是否上过音乐课，所有 19 种声调语言的母语者在平均上都有更好的辨别音乐旋律的能力，相对于非声调语言的母语者而言。但这种提高是有代价的：声调语言使用者在处理音乐节奏方面也更差。这些结果跨越了许多不同语言的母语者，并且对地理和人口统计学差异具有稳健性，表明语言经验塑造了音乐感知，这对音乐、语言和文化在人类思维中的关系具有启示意义。
