Abstract
Pitch variation is pervasive in speech, regardless of the language to which infants are exposed. Lexical tone is influenced by general sensitivity to pitch. We examined whether the development in lexical tone perception may develop in parallel with perception of pitch in other cognitive domains namely music. Using a visual fixation paradigm, 100 and one 4- and 12-month-old Dutch infants were tested on their discrimination of Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones as well as comparable three-note musical pitch contours. The 4-month-old infants failed to show a discrimination effect in either condition, whereas the 12-month-old infants succeeded in both conditions. These results suggest that lexical tone perception may reflect and relate to general pitch perception abilities, which may serve as a basis for developing more complex language and musical skills.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 297 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Volume | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
©2017 Chen, Stevens and Kager. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Keywords
- intonation (phonetics)
- music
- musical pitch