Language experience predicts music processing in a half-million speakers of fifty-four languages

摘要: Tonal languages differ from other languages in their use of pitch (tones) to distinguish words. Lifelong experience speaking and hearing tonal languages has been argued to shape auditory processing in ways that generalize beyond the perception of linguistic pitch to the perception of pitch in other domains like music. We conducted a meta-analysis of prior studies testing this idea, finding moderate evidence supporting it. But prior studies were limited by mostly small sample sizes representing a small number of languages and countries, making it challenging to disentangle the effects of linguistic experience from variability in music training, cultural differences, and other potential confounds. To address these issues, we used web-based citizen science to assess music perception skill on a global scale in 34,034 native speakers of 19 tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin, Yoruba). We compared their performance to 459 …