Neurophysiological Correlates of Musical and Prosodic Phrasing: Shared Processing Mechanisms and Effects of Musical Expertise

Abstract

The processing of prosodic phrase boundaries in language is immediately reflected by a specific event-related potential component called the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). A component somewhat reminiscent of the CPS in language has also been reported for musical phrases (i.e., the so-called ‘music CPS’). However, in previous studies the quantification of the music-CPS as well as its morphology and timing differed substantially from the characteristics of the language-CPS. Therefore, the degree of correspondence between cognitive mechanisms of phrasing in music and in language has remained questionable. Here, we probed the shared nature of mechanisms underlying musical and prosodic phrasing by (1) investigating whether the music-CPS is present at phrase boundary positions where the language-CPS has been originally reported (i.e., at the onset of the pause between phrases), and (2) comparing the CPS in music and in language in non-musicians and professional musicians. For the first time, we report a positive shift at the onset of musical phrase boundaries that strongly resembles the language-CPS and argue that the post-boundary ‘music-CPS’ of previous studies may be an entirely distinct ERP component. Moreover, the language-CPS in musicians was found to be less prominent than in non-musicians, suggesting more efficient processing of prosodic phrases in language as a result of higher musical expertise.

Punctuation and Implicit Prosody in Silent Reading: An ERP Study Investigating English Garden-Path Sentences

“…This concern appears plausible, because (1) the offset of a target word carrying an additional comma necessarily results in a larger visual contrast on the screen than the onset of the same word without a comma, and because (2) larger visual (and auditory) contrasts were found to elicit larger P200s (see Steinhauer, 2003 ). In fact, in a recent paper on musical phrasing, Glushko and colleagues have argued that the so-called ‘music-CPS’ found at musical phrase boundaries (e.g., Knösche et al, 2005 ) may be partly due to enhanced offset P200s, or to onset components of the following note (Glushko et al, 2016 ). Could a similar explanation be offered for the positivities reported here?…”

Language and music phrase boundary processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An ERP study

“…The experimental paradigm was developed based on the one used by Steinhauer and colleagues 39 with language stimuli adapted from the study of Pannekamp and co-authors 61 to make the task more appropriate for adult participants, and relied on the same stimuli used by Glushko and colleagues 50 . The sentences were grammatically all of the same form (# indicates the IPh boundary):…”

“…This so-called ‘music-CPS’, however, is characterized by a latency and duration different from that found for the language-CPS. More recently, the functional significance of this post-boundary music-CPS has been drawn into question, and an additional CPS-like response, named the boundary-onset music-CPS, has been observed during the musical phrase boundary for both musicians and non-musicians 50 . This response has a similar latency and distribution to the language-CPS, and is a prolonged positive shift.…”

Prosody–syntax integration in a second language: Contrasting event-related potentials from German and Chinese learners of English using linear mixed effect models

“…However, there is no evidence for enhanced CPS amplitudes in young children, and the numeric amplitude difference between Chinese and English speakers as a group is minimal (see Figure 3). The relatively large CPS in Chinese learners may, therefore, be primarily taken as support for the notion that boundary processing as such can be done at rather low levels of language proficiency, most likely because the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms are shared with other cognitive domains such as music (Glushko et al, 2016;Steinhauer et al, 2009). The finding of a smaller CPS in the German group was surprising and contrasts with Nickels et al (2013), a study that used the same paradigm but only tested a group of highly proficient German speakers against the native speaker group.…”