Abstract
Disorders of music and speech perception, known as amusia and aphasia, have traditionally been regarded as dissociated deficits based on studies of brain damaged patients. This has been taken as evidence that music and speech are perceived by largely separate and independent networks in the brain. However, recent studies of congenital amusia have broadened this view by showing that the deficit is associated with problems in perceiving speech prosody, especially intonation and emotional prosody. In the present study the association between the perception of music and speech prosody was investigated with healthy Finnish adults (n = 61) using an on-line music perception test including the Scale subtest of Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) and Off-Beat and Out-of-key tasks as well as a prosodic verbal task that measures the perception of word stress. Regression analyses showed that there was a clear association between prosody perception and music perception, especially in the domain of rhythm perception. This association was evident after controlling for music education, age, pitch perception, visuospatial perception, and working memory. Pitch perception was significantly associated with music perception but not with prosody perception. The association between music perception and visuospatial perception (measured using analogous tasks) was less clear. Overall, the pattern of results indicates that there is a robust link between music and speech perception and that this link can be mediated by rhythmic cues (time and stress).
Highlights
Music and speech have been considered as two aspects of the highly developed human cognition
How much do they have in common? Evolutionary theories suggest that music and speech may have had a common origin in form of an early communication system based on holistic vocalizations and body gestures (Mithen, 2005) and that music may have played a crucial role in social interaction and communication, especially between the mother and the infant (Trehub, 2003)
ASSESSMENT METHODS Music, speech prosody, pitch, and visuospatial perception abilities were assessed with computerized tests and working memory was evaluated using a traditional paper-pencil test
Summary
Music and speech have been considered as two aspects of the highly developed human cognition. Evolutionary theories suggest that music and speech may have had a common origin in form of an early communication system based on holistic vocalizations and body gestures (Mithen, 2005) and that music may have played a crucial role in social interaction and communication, especially between the mother and the infant (Trehub, 2003). Another view holds that the development of music can be understood more as a byproduct of other adaptive functions related to, for example, language, and emotion (Pinker, 1997). Four different models of predictors were examined: first the possibly confounding background variables, the possibly confounding variables measured by tests and lastly the test scores that were the main
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