The neurophysiology of multi-feature music processing in children with different language backgrounds

Poster Session C - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Angela Cheng¹ (angela.cheng22@my.stjohns.edu), Maxfield Rodgers¹, Kristal Reyes¹, Faith Chai¹, Blessy Gill¹, Gavin M. Bidelman², Valerie L. Shafer³, Yan H. Yu¹; ¹St. John’s University, New York, USA, ²Indiana University, ³The Graduate Center, City University of New York

The association/dissociation between music and language processing has long been a matter of debate. Musicians and tonal language speakers are more sensitive to pitch differences than nonmusicians and nontonal language speakers. Bilingual experience modulates auditory processing of sounds, but it is unclear whether and how bilingual experience affects music processing. We measured music processing in bilingual children (5-10 years old) from Mandarin (a tone language) households and three groups of age-matched children from non-tone language households (Bilingual Spanish-English, monolingual mainstream American English (MAE), and African American English (AAE)). The central question was whether bilingual experience on its own enhances auditory processing in general, or whether the its influence on music is dependent on language-specific properties (e.g., tone language, syllable-timed (English) or stress-timed (Spanish) language)). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in an oddball paradigm with six types of music changes (intensity, pitch, rhythm, timbre, slide and location). Preliminary results suggest that for music location changes, monolingual children from MAE backgrounds show larger negative responses (i.e., change detection) than the other three groups. Bilingual Mandarin-English and Spanish-English children showed larger negative responses to intensity compared to the MAE and AAE children. Children with Spanish-English backgrounds showed weaker responses to the change of rhythm and pitch compared to the other three groups. There were no clear advantages of pitch processing for children with Mandarin-English backgrounds. Our initial findings imply that bilingual experience on its may not influence music processing

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition