Smit Eline A, Rathcke Tamara V
Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Feb;32(1):342-351. doi: 10.3758/s13423-024-02513-4. Epub 2024 Jul 19.
The perception of rhythm has been studied across a range of auditory signals, with speech presenting one of the particularly challenging cases to capture and explain. Here, we asked if rhythm perception in speech is guided by perceptual biases arising from native language structures, if it is shaped by the cognitive ability to perceive a regular beat, or a combination of both. Listeners of two prosodically distinct languages - English and French - heard sentences (spoken in their native and the foreign language, respectively) and compared the rhythm of each sentence to its drummed version (presented at inter-syllabic, inter-vocalic, or isochronous intervals). While English listeners tended to map sentence rhythm onto inter-vocalic and inter-syllabic intervals in this task, French listeners showed a perceptual preference for inter-vocalic intervals only. The native language tendency was equally apparent in the listeners' foreign language and was enhanced by individual beat perception ability. These findings suggest that rhythm perception in speech is shaped primarily by listeners' native language experience with a lesser influence of innate cognitive traits.
人们已经对一系列听觉信号的节奏感知进行了研究，其中语音是最难捕捉和解释的情况之一。在此，我们探讨了语音中的节奏感知是由母语结构产生的感知偏差所引导，还是由感知规律节拍的认知能力所塑造，亦或是两者的结合。两种韵律截然不同的语言（英语和法语）的听众分别听用母语和外语说出的句子，并将每个句子的节奏与其鼓点版本（以音节间、元音间或等时间隔呈现）进行比较。在这项任务中，虽然英语听众倾向于将句子节奏映射到元音间和音节间的间隔上，但法语听众仅表现出对元音间间隔的感知偏好。母语倾向在听众的外语中同样明显，并且个体的节拍感知能力会增强这种倾向。这些发现表明，语音中的节奏感知主要由听众的母语经验塑造，先天认知特征的影响较小。
