| Literature DB >> 28337157 |
Ao Chen1, Catherine J Stevens2, René Kager3.
Abstract
Pitch variation is pervasive in speech, regardless of the language to which infants are exposed. Lexical tone is influenced by general sensitivity to pitch. We examined whether the development in lexical tone perception may develop in parallel with perception of pitch in other cognitive domains namely music. Using a visual fixation paradigm, 100 and one 4- and 12-month-old Dutch infants were tested on their discrimination of Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones as well as comparable three-note musical pitch contours. The 4-month-old infants failed to show a discrimination effect in either condition, whereas the 12-month-old infants succeeded in both conditions. These results suggest that lexical tone perception may reflect and relate to general pitch perception abilities, which may serve as a basis for developing more complex language and musical skills.Entities:
Keywords: cross-domain cognition; infancy; lexical tone; musical pitch; perception development
Year: 2017 PMID: 28337157 PMCID: PMC5343020 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00297
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Psychol ISSN: 1664-1078
Mean habituation time (s) and mean number of trials needed for habituation; raw looking time (s) to old and novel trial, and mean number of tokens in old and novel trial, separated by age group and condition.
| Music condition | Lexical tone condition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 m | 12 m | 4 m | 12 m | |||
| Habituation | Total time | 107.01 (94.18) | 72.61 (51.67) | 120.59 (65.86) | 85.00 (47.13) | |
| No. of trials | 7.35 (1.68) | 7.50 (1.96) | 7.32 (2.02) | 6.83 (1.16) | ||
| Test | old trial | Time | 10.15 (9.26) | 4.88 (3.51) | 13.84 (12.60) | 8.16 (6.71) |
| Tokens | 11.42 (7.53) | 6.29 (2.84) | 13.43 (10.25) | 8.91 (5.27) | ||
| novel trial | Time | 9.73 (9.74) | 8.02 (6.00) | 12.99 (12.43) | 12.35 (8.96) | |
| Tokens | 10.54 (7.98) | 9.00 (4.68) | 12.57 (8.56) | 12.00 (6.65) | ||