Rhythmic speech perception predicts novice musical composition in English and French.

Abstract

Music and speech have long been thought to have common cognitive underpinnings, and recent work demonstrates that the music of expert composers reflects the speech rhythm of their native language [H. Ollen (2003), P. Daniele (2003)]. In the current study, monolingual English speaking music novices composed simple “English” and “French” tunes on a piano keyboard. The rhythms produced reflected speech rhythms perceived in English and French, respectively. Yet, the pattern was opposite that produced by expert English and French composers and opposite that predicted by the acoustic determinants of speech rhythm that specify English speech as more rhythmically varied than French. Surprise recognition tests 2 weeks later confirmed that the music‐speech relationship remained over time. Participants then rated the rhythmic variability of French and English speech samples. We found that native English speakers perceived French as more variable than English despite the measured greater variability of English. Final...