关键词: 语言, 音乐, 声调范畴感知, 训练迁移效应

Abstract:

The relationship between music and language pitch processing experience has been extensively investigated in recent years. Based on the shared cognitive resources involved in language and music processing, researchers propose that the two domains share a common neurophysiological basis, enabling the transfer of experiences between them. The bidirectional transfer of domain-general acoustic experience in pitch processing has been widely validated. However, beyond domain-general resources, language processing also involves domain-specific phonemic resources, such as the categorical perception of lexical tones. Recent studies have suggested that experience with language and music can transfer to each other not only at the domain-general level but also at the domain-specific level, revealing the transfer of training effects. However, whether such transfer occurs in terms of the categorical perception of language tones remains unclear. To address this question, this study examines (1) whether musical experience influences phonemic tonal processing in Mandarin-speaking musicians and (2) whether their phonemic tonal categorical perception pattern affects fine-grained pitch processing in music.

The present study employed a 2 (group: musicians vs. nonmusicians) × 2 (stimulus type: music vs. language) mixed design. Sixty participants were involved in the current study, including thirty native Mandarin-speaking musicians and thirty native Mandarin-speaking nonmusicians. Identification and discrimination tasks within the traditional categorical perception paradigm were used. A Mandarin T1-T2 tonal continuum, ranging from [i ˥] to [i ˧˥], and its musical counterpart were constructed as stimuli. In the identification task, participants judged whether a stimulus in the continuum was T1 or T2 in terms of language stimuli or whether its pitch direction was level or rising in terms of music stimuli. In the discrimination task, participants determined whether two stimuli separated by two steps were the same or different.

The results revealed that (1) musicians presented a greater degree of categorical perception than nonmusicians did, as indicated by sharper and narrower category boundaries, enhanced between-category discrimination accuracy, and greater discrimination peak. This enhanced tonal categorical perception appeared to stem from their superior musical pitch processing ability. Additionally, musicians’ category boundary position was significantly closer to the T1 end in the tonal continuum than that of nonmusicians. (2) The identification curves of both musical and linguistic stimuli demonstrated a typical categorical perception pattern: identification rates differed significantly across category boundaries but were similar within categories. Similarly, the discrimination accuracy of between-category stimuli units was greater than that of within-category stimuli units for both the language and music stimuli, which could be interpreted as typical patterns of categorical perception.

These findings suggest that musical experience can cross-domains to enhance phonemic tonal processing in Mandarin-speaking musicians, whereas tonal categorical perception patterns can, in turn, transfer to music perception. This study provides empirical support for the bidirectional transfer effect between language and music experience from the perspective of tonal categorical perception. The results also validated the “transfer of training effects” and the shared mechanisms perspective of language and music processing.

Key words: music, language, tonal categorical perception, transfer of training effect