Individual Differences in Singing Behavior during Childhood Predicts Language Performance during Adulthood

Abstract

Research on singing and language abilities has gained considerable interest in the past decade. While several studies about singing ability and language capacity have been published, investigations on individual differences in singing behavior during childhood and its relationship to language capacity in adulthood have largely been neglected. We wanted to focus our study on whether individuals who had sung more often during childhood than their peers were also better in language and music capacity during adulthood. We used questionnaires to assess singing behavior of adults during childhood and tested them for their singing ability, their music perception skills, and their ability to perceive and pronounce unfamiliar languages. The results have revealed that the more often individuals had sung during childhood, the better their singing ability and language pronunciation skills were, while the amount of childhood singing was less predictive on music and language perception skills. We suggest that the amount of singing during childhood seems to influence the ability to sing and the ability to acquire foreign language pronunciation later in adulthood.

Examining Individual Differences in Singing, Musical and Tone Language Ability in Adolescents and Young Adults with Dyslexia

“…The subjects were instructed to repeat the phrases after listening to them for the third time. We used Mandarin samples that had been developed for assessing individual differences in Mandarin pronunciation in previous studies [ 36 , 45 , 46 , 53 ]. Recordings of the participants were normalized for their loudness and rated by Mandarin native speakers.…”

“…In general, there are two main branches of singing studies that focus on the positive transfer from singing to language: studies using singing as a tool to learn new vocabulary [ 43 , 44 ], and studies focusing on singing ability and its relationship to language ability. The latter used phonetic aptitude measures in which utterances of unfamiliar foreign languages had to be pronounced [ 36 , 45 , 46 ] or foreign accents had to be imitated [ 31 ] (so-called delayed mimicry paradigm [ 47 ]). These studies provide growing evidence that singing ability is particularly associated with the ability to mimic foreign accents and the ability to imitate and to pronounce foreign words and longer sequences of phrases [ 31 , 45 , 46 , 48 , 49 ].…”

“…The latter used phonetic aptitude measures in which utterances of unfamiliar foreign languages had to be pronounced [ 36 , 45 , 46 ] or foreign accents had to be imitated [ 31 ] (so-called delayed mimicry paradigm [ 47 ]). These studies provide growing evidence that singing ability is particularly associated with the ability to mimic foreign accents and the ability to imitate and to pronounce foreign words and longer sequences of phrases [ 31 , 45 , 46 , 48 , 49 ]. In general, musical training is associated with the improved processing of acoustic input.…”

“…In general, musical training is associated with the improved processing of acoustic input. Both singing ability and language pronunciation rely on vocal-motor skills and the integration of sensory and vocal-tract-related motor representations [ 27 , 28 , 35 , 45 ]. This has also been suggested to be a possible reason why singing ability is more strongly associated with language pronunciation than perceptual musical measures [ 28 , 35 ].…”

“…The same is true when individuals are instructed to learn to pronounce new words in an unknown language. In addition, pronunciation tasks provide information about individual differences in phonological ability [ 31 , 36 , 45 , 46 ].…”