Something close to it. Bidelman, Hutka and Moreno compared musicians, Cantonese speakers and English-speaking nonmusicians on , music perception and general cognitive measures. Musicians did better than the nonmusicians on every auditory measure. So did the Cantonese speakers, by a comparable margin, without any musical training at all.
The traffic runs both ways. Music training is already known to help language processing, but evidence for language shaping music perception had not been firmly established. Here a background went with higher auditory performance for music listening. Musicians and Cantonese speakers also showed better than the nonmusician controls, so the advantage may not be purely perceptual.
Music and language are intimately coupled, so that training in one can influence processing required in the other. The is by now well documented. The reverse direction, language shaping music perception, had yet to be firmly established, and that is the gap this study addresses.
The design is a cross-sectional comparison of three groups: musicians, Cantonese speakers and English-speaking nonmusicians. All three were tested on auditory pitch acuity, on music perception, and on general cognitive ability including fluid intelligence and working memory. Testing the cognitive measures alongside the auditory ones matters, because it allows the question of whether any advantage is specific to hearing.
Musicians showed superior performance on all the auditory measures, which is the expected result and a check that the tasks work. The finding is what happened with the Cantonese participants. Comparable perceptual enhancements appeared for them, relative to the English-speaking nonmusicians, with no musical training involved. A tone-language background is associated with higher auditory perceptual performance for music listening.
The cognitive results extend the picture. Musicians and Cantonese speakers both showed superior working memory capacity relative to nonmusician controls, which suggests that tone-language background and music training may be associated with enhanced general abilities rather than only with sharper ears. One caution governs all of it. This is a cross-sectional comparison of groups, so it cannot show which way the influence runs or rule out other differences between the groups.
wat. A lifetime of hearing meaning in pitch does some of what music lessons do.
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It treats a language as a kind of training. If speaking a tone language tunes the same perceptual machinery that music lessons tune, then the two domains share more of their foundations than either field assumed.
How do we know?
A cross-sectional comparison of three groups on tasks of auditory pitch acuity, music perception and general cognitive ability, including fluid intelligence and working memory.
What is still unknown
Cross-sectional, so it compares groups rather than following anyone, and it cannot rule out that people who hear pitch well are drawn to music or that other differences between the groups matter. The design cannot establish the direction of the effect.
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Where to next
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