Enhanced Passive and Active Processing of Syllables in Musician Children

摘要

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of musicalnexpertise in 9-year-old children on passive (as reflected by MMN)nand active (as reflected by discrimination accuracy) processing ofnspeech sounds. Musician and nonmusician children were presentednwith a sequence of syllables that included standards andndeviants in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and VOT. Both thenpassive and the active processing of duration and VOT deviantsnwere enhanced inmusician compared with nonmusician children.nMoreover, although no effect was found on the passive processingnof frequency, active frequency discrimination was enhanced innmusician children. These findings are discussed in terms of commonnprocessing of acoustic features in music and speech and ofnpositive transfer of training from music to the more abstract phonologicalnrepresentations of speech units (syllables).