Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Γνωσιακή ΕπιστήμηLibrary of the School of Science
Author:
Orfanou Alexandra-Christina
Supervisors info:
1. Βαρλοκώστα Σπυριδούλα, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
2. Βατάκη Αργυρώ, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ψυχολογίας, Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο
3. Ειρήνη Σκαλιόρα, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Original Title:
The contribution of musical rhythm to the processing of syntax and geometrical patterns of temporal and spatial hierarchy
Translated title:
The contribution of musical rhythm to the processing of syntax and geometrical patterns of temporal and spatial hierarchy
Summary:
Following findings from English- and Hungarian-speaking children, that musical rhythmic priming enhances subsequent syntactic processing of linguistic but not of other visuo-spatial or mathematical structures, we tested these effects in typically developing 11-year-old Greek-speaking children. Participants heard 32s musical sequences of strong metrical structure, weak metrical structure or silence. Then, they were visually presented with sentences, half of which had gender violations in the adjective-noun agreement, and were asked to perform grammaticality judgements. Τhe same experimental framework was used to investigate the effects of the rhythmic prime in two other visual tasks, where instead of sentences, participants were shown shape sequences based on temporal hierarchy and shape sets based on spatial hierarchy, half of which with violations to their construction rules. Behavioural data (grammaticality judgements and reaction times) were collected from two groups of children, with and without musical training. According to our scientific hypothesis, children should perform better and faster after hearing the strong metrical prime than after hearing the weak metrical prime or silence, but only in the linguistic task and the visual task with shape sequences. Indeed, the task with spatially organized shape sets was the only left unaffected by the type of the prime, indicating as an important factor of this effect the relevance of temporal hierarchy and not the cognitive domain of the task. Moreover, children with musical training were more powerfully influenced by the type of the rhythmic prime compared to untrained children, positively by the strong metrical sequence and negatively by the weak metrical one compared to baseline (silence). The implications of this result in cross-domain structural representation understanding and music-based rehabilitation are highly significant.
Main subject category:
Science
Other subject categories:
Philosophy - Psychology
Keywords:
Rhythmic priming, temporal hierarchy, sequencing, syntactic processing, music-based rehabilitation, cognitive science.
