Language-to-music transfer: Musical pitch perception by Cantonese and Mandarin listeners

Abstract

<p>Tone language background was found to facilitate musical pitch perception. However, researchers have often underrepresented tone language background as binary. To extend the previous studies, we examined the comparative effects of Cantonese and Mandarin language backgrounds on musical pitch perception. Native Cantonese and Mandarin listeners were tested on static pitch, pitch interval, and dynamic pitch discrimination. In all the tasks, the Cantonese listeners outperformed the Mandarin listeners in terms of sensitivity index and accuracy but not response time. The results suggest that Cantonese language background enhances musical pitch perception to a greater extent than Mandarin language background. In addition, this applied to both static and dynamic musical pitch. In the theoretical aspect, these results provide nuanced evidence for language-to-music transfer, suggesting that different tone language backgrounds may enhance musical pitch perception to differing degrees. Moreover, the findings support the bi-directional OPERA hypothesis and highlight the need to theoretically account for language-to-music transfer.<br></p>