Syntactic Processing in Language and Music: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Studies
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| Veröffentlicht in: | ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (2016) |
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| Abstract: | Language and music are multi-modal sensory systems which humans are exposed to on a daily basis. Both of these systems are characterized as possessing syntax, or a set of principles that dictate how the smallest discrete syntactic units (e.g., words or musical notes) can be combined to form larger elements (e.g., sentences or chord progressions). According to the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (Patel, 2003; 2008), these syntactic units in language and music are stored in distinct neural regions from one another, whereas the resources used to process syntax in language are the same as those used to process syntax in music. In the present dissertation, I used behavioral and electrophysiological (eventrelated potentials) methodologies to test the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH) and examine whether cognitive control is used to process syntax in music, and whether intensive prior experience with syntactic management (Experiments 1A and 1B) and auditory processing (Experiment 2) in language and music can influence how cognitive control is engaged during syntactic processing in music. Moreover, I examined whether different syntactic structures within and across language and music engage similar cognitive resources, as well as whether the time course of syntactic processing is similar or different for these structures in language and music (Experiment 3). Chapter 1 sets the theoretical and empirical stage for the experiments reported in Chapters 2-5 in this dissertation. In Chapter 1, I provide a broader theoretical and empirical context for the reported experiments by describing different theories that have been proposed to describe syntactic processing in music and language, including the most prominent and most-frequently tested SSIRH and the executive function perspective, as well as alternative accounts that have been proposed that specify the executive function perspective in terms of attention, working memory, and cognitive control. I also review a wider range of behavioral and neurocognitive studies on syntactic processing in music and language to provide the reader a broader empirical context to position the empirical studies I conducted. Chapters 2 – 5 are empirical chapters that are written in journal article format. Each of these chapters contains its own General Discussion section in which the theoretical and empirical implications of the experiment(s) are discussed. Chapter 6 is a general conclusion chapter that summarizes the main findings of Chapters 2 – 5 and provides a more overarching discussion of the theoretical and empirical implications of the experiments conducted for my dissertation, followed by suggestions for future research. Chapters 2 and 3 report Experiments 1A and AB, respectively. In Experiment 1A, Dutch-English bilingual musicians and non-musicians and English monolingual musicians and non-musicians completed an adapted version of the Stroop task in their native language (Dutch and English, respectively) during which the classic color-word Stroop task was paired with the presentation of chord progressions. Bilingual musicians were faster to respond across visually congruent and incongruent trials as compared to the other three groups. As expected, participants were also slower on visually incongruent trials than on congruent trials. However, I did not observe the predicted interference effect, which would suggest that cognitive control is engaged during syntactic processing in music. I also did not observe an effect of prior experience with syntactic management in language, music, or both on how cognitive control is engaged. In Experiment 1B, I explored whether Experiment 1A’s lack of interference effect was due to task instructions. In particular, I changed the instructions of the adapted Stroop task so that participants had to more actively process the musical syntax, allowing me to test Slevc and Okada’s (2015) hypothesis that cognitive control is only engaged during active syntactic processing in music when conflict detection and resolution is involved. Interestingly, English monolingual non-musicians still did not produce the predicted interference effect. Collectively, the findings from Experiments 1A and 1B suggest that cognitive control, as measured by the adapted Stroop task, was not engaged during syntactic processing in music, even when there is active syntactic processing in music. Chapter 4 reports Experiment 2 in which Chinese-English bilingual musicians and non-musicians completed the adapted Stroop task given in Experiment 1A, in their native language (Chinese). As in Experiment 1A and 1B, participants were slower on visually incongruent trials than on congruent trials, but did not experience the predicted interference effect. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) |
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| ISBN: | 9781392023570 |
| Quelle: | ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global |