Abstract
The strong association between music and speech has been supported by recent research focusing on musicians' superior abilities in second language learning and neural encoding of foreign speech sounds. However, evidence for a double association—the influence of linguistic background on music pitch processing and disorders—remains elusive. Because languages differ in their usage of elements (e.g., pitch) that are also essential for music, a unique opportunity for examining such language-to-music associations comes from a cross-cultural (linguistic) comparison of congenital amusia, a neurogenetic disorder affecting the music (pitch and rhythm) processing of about 5% of the Western population. In the present study, two populations (Hong Kong and Canada) were compared. One spoke a tone language in which differences in voice pitch correspond to differences in word meaning (in Hong Kong Cantonese, /si/ means ‘teacher’ and ‘to try’ when spoken in a high and mid pitch pattern, respectively). Using the On-line Identification Test of Congenital Amusia, we found Cantonese speakers as a group tend to show enhanced pitch perception ability compared to speakers of Canadian French and English (non-tone languages). This enhanced ability occurs in the absence of differences in rhythmic perception and persists even after relevant factors such as musical background and age were controlled. Following a common definition of amusia (5% of the population), we found Hong Kong pitch amusics also show enhanced pitch abilities relative to their Canadian counterparts. These findings not only provide critical evidence for a double association of music and speech, but also argue for the reconceptualization of communicative disorders within a cultural framework. Along with recent studies documenting cultural differences in visual perception, our auditory evidence challenges the common assumption of universality of basic mental processes and speaks to the domain generality of culture-to-perception influences.
Highlights
The present study examines how differences in cultural backgrounds affect the way in which people perceive auditory signals
We focused on a dominant aspect of auditory processing, pitch, with rhythm as a control condition, by using the On-Line Identification Test of Congenital Amusia [13]
We report here results from participants between 18 and 40 years old, which include 408 participants from Hong Kong (267 females) and 154 participants from Canada (99 females)
Summary
The present study examines how differences in cultural backgrounds affect the way in which people perceive auditory signals. Cultural differences in worldview, representations of self, and even thinking styles have been documented extensively: East Asians tend to be more collective, interdependent, and holistic, while Westerners tend to be more individualistic, independent, and analytic [8,9,10]. These broader and higher-level cultural differences have been used to explain differences in visual perception. Because East Asians view the world more holistically, they see both the background and foreground object in a picture, and because Westerners are more analytic, they focus more on the salient foreground object alone [11]
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