Investigating individual differences in linguistic statistical learning and their relation to rhythmic and cognitive abilities.

Description

Music and language share rhythmic properties as well as cognitive underpinnings for processing these auditory stimuli through the entrainment of neural oscillations to the rhythm of the external stimulus. We investigate whether individual differences in neural entrainment as a measure of statistical language learning can be explained in part by musical, particularly rhythmic, abilities of an individual.
Statistical Learning (SL) plays a crucial role in speech segmentation, which is imperative for language acquisition and attainment. SL involves analyzing the likelihood (transitional probabilities) that one syllable follows another, with lower probabilities typically indicating boundaries between distinct words.
This study, detailed in our Registered Report (https://osf.io/2y6sx), explores the underpinnings of individual differences in auditory SL for word segmentation under the hypothesis that superior musical, particularly
rhythmic, abilities may enhance SL abilities also for language. Data collection is ongoing, and we aim to present some initial results at the conference.
Adult participants are exposed to an artificial language of trisyllabic nonsense words, with SL assessed online via EEG measures of neural entrainment. They are also tested on their general musical (Goldsmith’s Musical Sophistication Index) and rhythmic ability through music processing (Beat Alignment Test; Profile Of Music Perception Skills) and rhythmic speech production (Spontaneous Synchronization of Speech task). We also investigate participants’ working memory (forward Digit Span) and vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Task).

Period	17 Oct 2024
Event title	Second international conference on computational and cognitive musicology
Event type	Conference
Conference number	2
Location	Utrecht, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International