Musical Aptitude and the Acquisition of Pitch and Duration in L2 Vowels

Abstract

Music and language have been believed to be processed similarly in the brain. Studies have compared the processing of vowels and music, as they share spectral and temporal features such as pitch and timing. When comparing music and language skills the question arises whether music skills are inherent, measured with aptitude, or acquired, measured with experience. This article focused on musical aptitude studies. It was found that musical aptitude predicted non-native speech-sound processing better than musical experience. It is proposed that music and language skills are interconnected as greater overlaps in neural processing of music and speech were found for musicians than nonmusicians, and as individuals with no musical experience but with high L2 production skills were found to have high musical aptitude. Furthermore, spectral sensitivity was found to be the primary partial mediator of the link between musicality and non-native speech-sound processing, with temporal sensitivity having no role.