Temporally regular musical primes facilitate subsequent syntax processing in children with Specific Language Impairment

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Abstract

Children with developmental language disorders have been shown to be also impaired in rhythm and meter perception. Temporal processing and its link to language processing can be understood within the dynamic attending theory. An external stimulus can stimulate internal oscillators, which orient attention over time and drive speech signal segmentation to provide benefits for syntax processing, which is impaired in various patient populations. For children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and dyslexia, previous research has shown the influence of an external rhythmic stimulation on subsequent language processing by comparing the influence of a temporally regular musical prime to that of a temporally irregular prime. Here we tested whether the observed rhythmic stimulation effect is indeed due to a benefit provided by the regular musical prime (rather than a cost subsequent to the temporally irregular prime). Sixteen children with SLI and 16 age-matched controls listened to either a regular musical prime sequence or an environmental sound scene (without temporal regularities in event occurrence; i.e., referred to as "baseline condition") followed by grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. They were required to perform grammaticality judgments for each auditorily presented sentence. Results revealed that performance for the grammaticality judgments was better after the regular prime sequences than after the baseline sequences. Our findings are interpreted in the theoretical framework of the dynamic attending theory (Jones, 1976) and the temporal sampling (oscillatory) framework for developmental language disorders (Goswami, 2011). Furthermore, they encourage the use of rhythmic structures (even in non-verbal materials) to boost linguistic structure processing and outline perspectives for rehabilitation.

Figures

  • TABLE 1 | SLI children’s results for the additional neuropsychological tests.
  • TABLE 2 | Correlations r between the SLI children’s results in the neuropsychological tests [Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices, Reading test (“L’Alouette,” scores transformed into reading age in months), ECOSSE, EVIPE], the results on the music perception test MBEMA with its pitch and rhythm subtests as well as the patient’s chronological age.
  • FIGURE 1 | Musical score of the beginning of the regular musical prime. The timeline under the score part indicates the onsets of each note (in milliseconds). Adapted from Przybylski et al. (2013), Figure 1.
  • FIGURE 2 | Result of a Fast Fourrier Transform analysis of the sound file of the baseline prime, confirming that no regularities emerge from the event pattern.
  • FIGURE 3 | d’ data pattern averaged over participants, presented as a function of the prime (Regular, Baseline), and the participant groups (SLI children, control group). Error bars indicate between-participant standard errors.
  • TABLE 3 | c data pattern (means, standard errors) averaged over participants, presented as a function of the prime (Regular, Baseline), and the participant groups (SLI children, control children).
  • TABLE 4 | Percentages of correct responses (averaged over participants) and standard errors presented as a function of the subtest of the MBEMA (pitch, rhythm) and the participant groups (SLI children, control children).

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CITATION STYLE

APA

Bedoin, N., Brisseau, L., Molinier, P., Roch, D., & Tillmann, B. (2016). Temporally regular musical primes facilitate subsequent syntax processing in children with Specific Language Impairment. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10(JUN). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00245

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