Rhythmic and textural musical sequences differently influence syntax and semantic processing in children

No influence of regular rhythmic priming on grammaticality judgment and sentence comprehension in English-speaking children

A growing body of research has demonstrated the association between music and language, particularly between rhythm and grammar skills in children. A compelling piece of evidence for the influence of music on language comes from findings that a brief exposure to regular musical rhythm improved subsequent syntactic language performance in children. Nevertheless, those observations were made on one particular task, i.e., grammaticality judgment, mostly with French-speaking children. Here, we sought to corroborate and extend the rhythmic priming effect with English-speaking children aged 7 to 12 years who underwent two different syntactic tasks on spoken sentences: one involving judgment on morphosyntactic well-formedness (grammaticality judgment) and the other requiring noun-verb relation analysis (sentence comprehension), both following either regular or irregular rhythmic priming. Half of the children were administered synthetic speech stimuli (Experiment 1), and the other half were presented with natural speech (Experiment 2). Across the two experiments, we did not find any rhythmic priming effect; children's performance on both the grammaticality judgment and sentence comprehension tasks was comparable irrespective of the regularity in prior rhythms. These results imply that the positive influence of regular rhythmic priming on syntactic processing may be confined to specific language or age populations, warranting further investigation.

Articulation posture influences pitch during singing imagery

Facial muscle activity contributes to singing and to articulation: in articulation, mouth shape can alter vowel identity; and in singing, facial movement correlates with pitch changes. Here, we examine whether mouth posture causally influences pitch during singing imagery. Based on perception-action theories and embodied cognition theories, we predict that mouth posture influences pitch judgments even when no overt utterances are produced. In two experiments (total N = 160), mouth posture was manipulated to resemble the articulation of either /i/ (as in English meet; retracted lips) or /o/ (as in French rose; protruded lips). Holding this mouth posture, participants were instructed to mentally "sing" given songs (which were all positive in valence) while listening with their inner ear and, afterwards, to assess the pitch of their mental chant. As predicted, compared to the o-posture, the i-posture led to higher pitch in mental singing. Thus, bodily states can shape experiential qualities, such as pitch, during imagery. This extends embodied music cognition and demonstrates a new link between language and music.

Regular rhythmic primes improve sentence repetition in children with developmental language disorder

Recently reported links between rhythm and grammar processing have opened new perspectives for using rhythm in clinical interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Previous research using the rhythmic priming paradigm has shown improved performance on language tasks after regular rhythmic primes compared to control conditions. However, this research has been limited to effects of rhythmic priming on grammaticality judgments. The current study investigated whether regular rhythmic primes could also benefit sentence repetition, a task requiring proficiency in complex syntax-an area of difficultly for children with DLD. Regular rhythmic primes improved sentence repetition performance compared to irregular rhythmic primes in children with DLD and with typical development-an effect that did not occur with a non-linguistic control task. These findings suggest processing overlap for musical rhythm and linguistic syntax, with implications for the use of rhythmic stimulation for treatment of children with DLD in clinical research and practice.

The Association between Music and Language in Children: A State-of-the-Art Review

Music and language are two complex systems that specifically characterize the human communication toolkit. There has been a heated debate in the literature on whether music was an evolutionary precursor to language or a byproduct of cognitive faculties that developed to support language. The present review of existing literature about the relationship between music and language highlights that music plays a critical role in language development in early life. Our findings revealed that musical properties, such as rhythm and melody, could affect language acquisition in semantic processing and grammar, including syntactic aspects and phonological awareness. Overall, the results of the current review shed further light on the complex mechanisms involving the music-language link, highlighting that music plays a central role in the comprehension of language development from the early stages of life.

Deep symbolic processing of human-performed musical sequences

Artificial music tutors are needed for assisting a performer during his/her practice time whenever a human tutor is not available. But for these artificial tutors to be intelligent and fulfill the role of a music tutor, they have to be able to identify errors made by the performer while playing a musical sequence. This task is not a trivial one, since all musical activities are considered as open-ended domains. Therefore, not only there is no unique correct way of performing a musical sequence, but also the analysis made by the tutor has to consider the development level of the performer, the difficulty level of the performed musical sequence, and many other variables. This paper describes an ongoing research that uses cascading connected layers of symbolic processing as the core of a human-performed error identification and characterization module able to overcome the complexity of the studied open-ended domain.

When Visual Cues Do Not Help the Beat: Evidence for a Detrimental Effect of Moving Point-Light Figures on Rhythmic Priming

Rhythm perception involves strong auditory-motor connections that can be enhanced with movement. However, it is unclear whether just seeing someone moving to a rhythm can enhance auditory-motor coupling, resulting in stronger entrainment. Rhythmic priming studies show that presenting regular rhythms before naturally spoken sentences can enhance grammaticality judgments compared to irregular rhythms or other baseline conditions. The current study investigated whether introducing a point-light figure moving in time with regular rhythms could enhance the rhythmic priming effect. Three experiments revealed that the addition of a visual cue did not benefit rhythmic priming in comparison to auditory conditions with a static image. In Experiment 1 (27 7–8-year-old children), grammaticality judgments were poorer after audio-visual regular rhythms (with a bouncing point-light figure) compared to auditory-only regular rhythms. In Experiments 2 (31 adults) and 3 (31 different adults), there was no difference in grammaticality judgments after audio-visual regular rhythms compared to auditory-only irregular rhythms for either a bouncing point-light figure (Experiment 2) or a swaying point-light figure (Experiment 3). Comparison of the observed performance with previous data suggested that the audio-visual component removed the regular prime benefit. These findings suggest that the visual cues used in this study do not enhance rhythmic priming and could hinder the effect by potentially creating a dual-task situation. In addition, individual differences in sensory-motor and social scales of music reward influenced the effect of the visual cue. Implications for future audio-visual experiments aiming to enhance beat processing, and the importance of individual differences will be discussed.

Training Effects and Intelligent Evaluated Pattern of the Holistic Music Educational Approach for Children with Developmental Delay

This study focuses on the holistic music educational approach for young children developed by music therapists and experts, which combines technology with music, integrates it into the local culture, and frameworks it for holistic education. This method includes 231 children in Taiwan's early intervention education system for children with developmental delay. The learning occurs twice a week for 40 min over 32 weeks. The results show that implementing the holistic music educational approach can significantly improve children's ability with developmental delay and that supportive training has a positive effect. In addition, the decision tree explores and develops an intelligently evaluated pattern with highly effective learning. This model has a sensitivity rate of 90.6% on the in-sample, and the comprehensive indicator F is 79.9%, so it has a high reference value. In the future, those involved in education will be able to use the data mining to use the auxiliary decision-making system as an assessment tool for young children participating in education pre- and midterm of the course, to prejudge its continued implementation and learning effectiveness, to decide whether to continue to invest in and adjust the curriculum, and to make more effective use of educational resources.

Maternal depression is associated with decreased functional connectivity within semantics and phonology networks in preschool children

INTRODUCTION

Maternal depression is characterized by a lack of emotional responsiveness and engagement with their child, which may lead to the child's decreased cognitive, and language outcomes all related to the child's future reading outcomes. The relations between maternal depression and functional connectivity in neural circuits supporting language in the child was explored.

METHODS

Eleven 4-year-old girls completed language abilities assessment and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Their mothers completed the Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) to examine maternal depression when the child was 12 months old and at the age of 4. Functional connections within the child's resting-state phonology, semantics, language networks were correlated with maternal BDI scores at the age of 4 years.

RESULTS

Higher maternal depression was associated with the child's decreased within the semantic and phonological networks connectivity during rest. Higher maternal depression at 4 years moderated the relationship between early depression scores and functional connectivity within the phonological network.

CONCLUSIONS

Maternal depression in the first year of life is related to functional connections of phonological processing and enhanced by current maternal depression levels. We conclude that after a mother gives birth, resources should be provided to minimize depressive symptoms and interventions should be applied to support their child's language development for future reading acquisition.

Hierarchical control as a shared neurocognitive mechanism for language and music

Although comparative research has made substantial progress in clarifying the relationship between language and music as neurocognitive systems from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, there is still no consensus about which mechanisms, if any, are shared and how they bring about different neurocognitive systems. In this paper, we tackle these two questions by focusing on hierarchical control as a neurocognitive mechanism underlying syntax in language and music. We put forward the Coordinated Hierarchical Control (CHC) hypothesis: linguistic and musical syntax rely on hierarchical control, but engage this shared mechanism differently depending on the current control demand. While linguistic syntax preferably engages the abstract rule-based control circuit, musical syntax rather employs the coordination of the abstract rule-based and the more concrete motor-based control circuits. We provide evidence for our hypothesis by reviewing neuroimaging as well as neuropsychological studies on linguistic and musical syntax. The CHC hypothesis makes a set of novel testable predictions to guide future work on the relationship between language and music.

Does rhythmic priming improve grammatical processing in Hungarian-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder?

Research has described several features shared between musical rhythm and speech or language, and experimental studies consistently show associations between performance on tasks in the two domains as well as impaired rhythm processing in children with language disorders. Motivated by these results, in the current study our first aim was to explore whether a short exposure to a regular musical rhythm (i.e., rhythmic priming) can improve subsequent grammatical processing in preschool‐aged Hungarian‐speaking children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Second, we investigated whether rhythmic priming is specific to grammar processing by assessing priming in two additional domains: a linguistic but non‐grammatical task (picture naming) and a non‐linguistic task (nonverbal Stroop task). Third, to confirm that the rhythmic priming effect originates from the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm and not the negative effect of the control condition, we added a third condition, silence, for all the three tasks. Both groups of children showed better performance on the grammaticality judgment task in the regular compared to both the irregular and the silent conditions but no such effect appeared in the non‐grammatical and non‐linguistic tasks. These results suggest that (1) rhythmic priming can improve grammatical processing in Hungarian, a language with complex morphosyntax, both in children with and without DLD, (2) the effect is specific to grammar and (3) is a result of the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm. These results could motivate further research about integrating rhythmic priming into traditional speech‐language therapy. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/zKzGuIjZyvU.

Is atypical rhythm a risk factor for developmental speech and language disorders?

Although a growing literature points to substantial variation in speech/language abilities related to individual differences in musical abilities, mainstream models of communication sciences and disorders have not yet incorporated these individual differences into childhood speech/language development. This article reviews three sources of evidence in a comprehensive body of research aligning with three main themes: (a) associations between musical rhythm and speech/language processing, (b) musical rhythm in children with developmental speech/language disorders and common comorbid attentional and motor disorders, and (c) individual differences in mechanisms underlying rhythm processing in infants and their relationship with later speech/language development. In light of converging evidence on associations between musical rhythm and speech/language processing, we propose the Atypical Rhythm Risk Hypothesis, which posits that individuals with atypical rhythm are at higher risk for developmental speech/language disorders. The hypothesis is framed within the larger epidemiological literature in which recent methodological advances allow for large-scale testing of shared underlying biology across clinically distinct disorders. A series of predictions for future work testing the Atypical Rhythm Risk Hypothesis are outlined. We suggest that if a significant body of evidence is found to support this hypothesis, we can envision new risk factor models that incorporate atypical rhythm to predict the risk of developing speech/language disorders. Given the high prevalence of speech/language disorders in the population and the negative long-term social and economic consequences of gaps in identifying children at-risk, these new lines of research could potentially positively impact access to early identification and treatment. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain Neuroscience > Development Linguistics > Language Acquisition.