Congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers

Linjun Zhang; Wenling Jiang; Hua Shu; Yang Zhang

doi:10.1121/1.5100899

Congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers

Linjun Zhang, Wenling Jiang, Hua Shu, Yang Zhang

Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study adopted the Musical Ear Test [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196] to compare musical competence of sighted and congenitally blind Mandarin speakers. On the rhythm subtest, the blind participants outperformed the sighted. On the melody subtest, however, the two groups performed equally well. Compared with sighted speakers of non-tonal languages reported in previous studies [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196; Bhatara, Yeung, and Nazzi (2015). J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41(2), 277-282], sighted Mandarin speakers performed better only on the melody subtest. These results indicate that tonal language experience and congenital blindness exert differential influences on musical aptitudes with rhythm perception reflecting a cross-modal compensation effect and melody perception dominated by a cross-domain language-to-music transfer effect.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	EL354-EL359
Journal	Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume	145
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5100899
State	Published - May 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the Social Science Fund of Beijing (Grant No. 17YYA004) and the Science Foundation of Beijing Language and Culture University (Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities) (Grant No. 18PT09) to L.Z.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Acoustical Society of America.

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title = "Congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers",

abstract = "This study adopted the Musical Ear Test [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196] to compare musical competence of sighted and congenitally blind Mandarin speakers. On the rhythm subtest, the blind participants outperformed the sighted. On the melody subtest, however, the two groups performed equally well. Compared with sighted speakers of non-tonal languages reported in previous studies [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196; Bhatara, Yeung, and Nazzi (2015). J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41(2), 277-282], sighted Mandarin speakers performed better only on the melody subtest. These results indicate that tonal language experience and congenital blindness exert differential influences on musical aptitudes with rhythm perception reflecting a cross-modal compensation effect and melody perception dominated by a cross-domain language-to-music transfer effect.",

author = "Linjun Zhang and Wenling Jiang and Hua Shu and Yang Zhang",

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N2 - This study adopted the Musical Ear Test [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196] to compare musical competence of sighted and congenitally blind Mandarin speakers. On the rhythm subtest, the blind participants outperformed the sighted. On the melody subtest, however, the two groups performed equally well. Compared with sighted speakers of non-tonal languages reported in previous studies [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196; Bhatara, Yeung, and Nazzi (2015). J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41(2), 277-282], sighted Mandarin speakers performed better only on the melody subtest. These results indicate that tonal language experience and congenital blindness exert differential influences on musical aptitudes with rhythm perception reflecting a cross-modal compensation effect and melody perception dominated by a cross-domain language-to-music transfer effect.

AB - This study adopted the Musical Ear Test [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196] to compare musical competence of sighted and congenitally blind Mandarin speakers. On the rhythm subtest, the blind participants outperformed the sighted. On the melody subtest, however, the two groups performed equally well. Compared with sighted speakers of non-tonal languages reported in previous studies [Wallentin, Nielsen, Friis-Olivarius, Vuust, and Vuust (2010). Learn. Indiv. Diff. 20, 188-196; Bhatara, Yeung, and Nazzi (2015). J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41(2), 277-282], sighted Mandarin speakers performed better only on the melody subtest. These results indicate that tonal language experience and congenital blindness exert differential influences on musical aptitudes with rhythm perception reflecting a cross-modal compensation effect and melody perception dominated by a cross-domain language-to-music transfer effect.

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Congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers

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