Further studies of perception of speech and music in children

Abstract

The present research is a continuation of an investigation carried out at C.C.R.M.A., Stanford University [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 2403(A) (1993)], on the perception of the pitch of speech and music in children. Experiments sought to determine whether male and female subjects [N=120 (40×3)] 6 to 14 years of age, monolingual speakers of either Spanish, a tongue with prosodic pitch contrasts, or Otomi or Zapotec, Otomanguean tongues with lexical pitch contrasts between words, and having training in singing or in diverse musical instruments would perceive the pitch of speech as they perceived the pitch of musical sounds. Data obtained provide information that Spanish-speaking subjects at all ages and younger Otomi- and Zapotec-speaking subjects perceived the pitch of samples of their language in a manner that was similar to their perception of the pitch of synthesized musical samples. These results applied irrespective of musical background. On the other hand, older subjects speaking Otomanguean tongues seemed to perceive the lexical pitch shifts in words of their language in a manner contrasting with the perception of musical pitch. Neurosurgical studies are in progress to assess whether these differences are due to changes in the cerebral localization of pitch perception in the course of central auditory development.