Abstract
As language rhythm relies partly on general acoustic properties, such as intensity and duration, mastering two languages with distinct rhythmic properties (i.e., stress position) may enhance musical rhythm perception. We investigated whether competence in a second language (L2) with different rhythmic properties than a L1 affects musical rhythm aptitude. Turkish early (TELG) and late learners (TLLG) of German were compared to German late L2 learners of English (GLE) regarding their musical rhythmic aptitude. While Turkish and German present distinct linguistic rhythm and metric properties, German and English are rather similar in this regard. To account for inter-individual differences, we measured participants' short-term and working memory (WM) capacity, melodic aptitude, and time they spent listening to music. Both groups of Turkish L2 learners of German perceived rhythmic variations significantly better than German L2 learners of English. No differences were found between early and late learners' performance. Our findings suggest that mastering two languages with different rhythmic properties enhances musical rhythm perception, providing further evidence of shared cognitive resources between language and music.
Highlights
Over the last few decades the impact of bilingualism and second language learning (L2) on cognitive processes has been the objective of many studies
PARTICIPANTS Eighty-five right-handed participants were assigned to three experimental groups, i.e., 27 Turkish late L2 learners of German (13 females, Mage = 29.11, SD = 3.85, mean age of L2 first exposure, AoL2FE = 20.03, SD = 6.40), 26 Turkish early L2 learners of German (12 females, Mage = 26.80, SD = 4.48, MAoL2FE = 1.03, SD = 0.19) and 32 German late L2 learners of English (16 females, Mage = 25.71, SD = 2.55, MAoL2FE = 10.04, SD = 1.27)
In the current study, we investigated the musical rhythm aptitude of Turkish early and late L2 learners of German and that of German late L2 learners of English to address two main issues
Summary
Over the last few decades the impact of bilingualism and second language learning (L2) on cognitive processes has been the objective of many studies. Previous research reported a positive association between bilingualism and verbal and non-verbal intelligence (Peal and Lambert, 1962), problemsolving skills (Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok and Shapero, 2005), phonological memory (Service, 1992; Cheung, 1996), and working memory (WM) capacity in attention-impeding tasks (Yang et al, 2005). Studies report a positive effect of musical aptitude on second language skills, such as pronunciation (Milovanov et al, 2008) and phonological perception (Slevc and Miyake, 2006). As far as this study is concerned, the impact of second language learning on musical rhythm aptitude has not been investigated
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