Neuropsychology
2013, Vol. 27, No. 1, 121–131
© 2013 American Psychological Association
0894-4105/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0031277
Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation Influences Syntactic Processing in Children
With Developmental Language Disorders
Lauranne Przybylski
Nathalie Bedoin
Lyon Neuroscience Research Center
Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage and Université Lyon 2
Sonia Krifi-Papoz
Vania Herbillon
Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant, Service de Neuropédiatrie,
Lyon, France
Lyon Neuroscience Research Center
Didier Roch
Laure Léculier
Institut Médico-Educatif Franchemont, Champigny-sur-Marne
Lyon, France
Sonja A. Kotz
Barbara Tillmann
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Lyon Neuroscience Research Center
Objective: Children with developmental language disorders have been shown to be impaired not only in
language processing (including syntax), but also in rhythm and meter perception. Our study tested the
influence of external rhythmic auditory stimulation (i.e., musical rhythm) on syntax processing in
children with specific language impairment (SLI; Experiment 1A) and dyslexia (Experiment 1B).
Method: Children listened to either regular or irregular musical prime sequences followed by blocks of
grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. They were required to perform grammaticality judgments
for each auditorily presented sentence. Results: Performance of all children (SLI, dyslexia, and controls)
in the grammaticality judgments was better after regular prime sequences than after irregular prime
sequences, as shown by d= data. The benefit of the regular prime was stronger for SLI children (partial
2 ⫽ .34) than for dyslexic children (partial 2 ⫽ .14), who reached higher performance levels.
Conclusion: Together with previous findings on deficits in temporal processing and sequencing, as well
as with the recent proposition of a temporal sampling (oscillatory) framework for developmental
language disorders (U. A. Goswami, 2011, Temporal sampling framework for developmental dyslexia,
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 15, pp. 3–10), our results point to potential avenues in using rhythmic
structures (even in nonverbal materials) to boost linguistic structure processing.
Keywords: specific language impairment, dyslexia, music, syntax processing, temporal processing
Recent research has dedicated increased attention to the investigation of neural resources potentially shared between language
and music processing, notably for the processing of syntax (e.g.,
Patel, 2003), pitch (e.g., Besson, Schön, Moreno, Santos, &
Magne, 2007; Magne, Schön, & Besson, 2006; Schön, Magne, &
Besson, 2004), and timing (e.g., Kotz & Schwartze, 2010;
Schmidt-Kassow, Rothermich, Schwartze, & Kotz, 2011). This
research has also motivated the investigation of music processing
in populations with impaired language processing. Impaired musical structure processing (regarding the pitch dimension; in par-
Lauranne Przybylski, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), Unité mixte de recherche 5292, Institut national de la santé et
de la recherche médicale, U1028, Université Lyon 1, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Auditory Cognition and Psychoacoustics Team,
Lyon, France; Nathalie Bedoin, Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage
and Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France; Sonia Krifi-Papoz, Service de
Neuropédiatrie, Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant HFME, Lyon, France;
Vania Herbillon, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Lyon, France;
Didier Roch, Institut Médico-Educatif Franchemont, Champignysur-Marne, Paris, France; Laure Léculier, speech therapist, Lyon,
France; Sonja A. Kotz, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive
and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; Barbara Tillmann, CNRS,
Unité mixte de recherche 5292, Institut national de la santé et de la
recherche médicale, U1028, Université Lyon 1, Lyon Neuroscience
Research Center, Auditory Cognition and Psychoacoustics Team, Lyon,
France.
This work was partly supported by a Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique-Projets exploratoires premier soutien (PEPS) grant and by an
ANR grant (# 09-BLAN-0310).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Barbara
Tillmann, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CNRS-UMR 5292,
INSERM U1028, Université Lyon 1, Team Auditory Cognition and
Psychoacoustics, 50 Av. Tony Garnier, F-69366 Lyon Cedex 07,
France. E-mail: barbara.tillmann@olfac.univ-lyon1.fr
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PRZYBYLSKI ET AL.
ticular, harmonic structures) has been shown in aphasic patients
(Patel, Iversen, Wassenaar, & Hagoort, 2008) and children with
specific language impairment (SLI; Jentschke, Koelsch, Sallat, &
Friederici, 2008). Impaired pitch processing has also been reported
in SLI (McArthur & Bishop, 2004) and dyslexia (Baldeweg,
Richardson, Watkins, Foale, & Gruzelier, 1999; Foxton et al.,
2003; Santos, Joly-Pottuz, Moreno, Habib, & Besson, 2007). Impaired rhythm and meter processing has been reported in SLI
(Corriveau & Goswami, 2009; Weinert, 1992) and dyslexia (Muneaux, Ziegler, Truc, Thomson, & Goswami, 2004; Overy, Nicolson, Fawcett, & Clarke, 2003; Thomson & Goswami, 2008).
Our study focused on temporal processing (i.e., rhythm, meter)
and investigated its influence on language processing in both SLI
children (Experiment 1A) and dyslexic children (Experiment 1B).1
Recent research has increasingly investigated the two populations
in parallel because of overlapping disorders in phonological skills
and auditory processing (e.g., Fraser, Goswami, & ContiRamsden, 2010; Marshall, Harcout-Brown, Ramus, & van der
Lely, 2009). Both populations have been shown to have deficits in
rhythm and meter processing. SLI children’s performance in a
paced tapping task (i.e., tapping to a metronome) predicted their
performance in word and nonword reading, rime awareness, nonword repetition, and reading comprehension (Corriveau & Goswami, 2009). Similarly, dyslexic children’s performance in beat
perception predicted word and nonword reading as well as phonological awareness (Muneaux et al., 2004). Congruent findings
have been reported by Overy et al. (2003), who asked dyslexic
children to tap to the rhythm of a song (i.e., “Happy Birthday”),
which is a form of syllable segmentation and reflects a type of
phonological awareness that is of major importance for (acquiring)
skilled reading.
These rhythm-processing deficits have been suggested to lead to
difficulties in accurately processing relevant auditory cues in
speech. They can lead to deficits in language processing by disrupting suprasegmental processing required to extract words and
syllables from the speech stream (Corriveau & Goswami, 2009;
Thomson & Goswami, 2008), and by impairing the to-bedeveloped phonological representations (e.g., onset-rime awareness), which are also related to reading (Muneaux et al., 2004).
Impaired encoding of suprasegmental information (e.g., word
stress, intonation, rhythm) in SLI and dyslexia also has consequences on syntactic structure processing (Sabisch, Hahne, Glass,
von Suchodoletz, & Friederici, 2009; Marshall et al., 2009; Weinert, 1992). Syntax deficits are particularly pronounced in SLI, in
addition to deficits in phonology and semantic processing (Bishop
& Snowling, 2004; Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005), but
syntactic difficulties have also been documented in dyslexia. For
example, dyslexic children showed a delayed early left anterior
negativity (an early event-related potential [ERP] component for
syntactic violations) and no right anterior negativity (associated
with prosodic violations; Sabisch, Hahne, Glass, von Suchodoletz,
& Friederici, 2006).
The relation between temporal regularity, phonological processing, and syntax processing is further supported by recent ERP
studies in healthy adults. In second-language perception, the regularity of metric cues provides relevant cues not only for prosodic
processing, but also for segmentation and syntax processing
(Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2011). In native language perception, the
manipulation of temporal intervals between word onsets further
confirms that regular, predictable presentation boosts syntax processing, as reflected by an increase of an electrophysiological
marker for syntactically incorrect events (i.e., the P600, a positivity starting about 600 ms after the onset of an incorrect event;
Schmidt-Kassow & Kotz, 2008, 2009).
Rhythmic and temporal processing can be understood in Jones’s
framework of dynamic attending (e.g., Jones, 2008; Jones & Boltz,
1989). Originally inspired by the processing of musical structures,
this framework has been more recently applied to speech (e.g.,
Kotz, Schwartze, & Schmidt-Kassow, 2009; Quené & Port, 2005).
The framework postulates that attention is not equally distributed
over time, but develops in cycles: Internal oscillators synchronize
to the temporal regularities of an external stimulus. They orient
attention over time and allow developing expectations about the
temporal occurrence of a next event, which then facilitates processing of events at expected time points and facilitates segmentation and structural, temporal integration.
Converging evidence comes from a different line of research
proposing to stimulate internal oscillators with an external stimulus in order to provide benefit for structure processing. As syntax
processing is impaired in patients with basal ganglia lesions, who
are notably not showing the P600 (Kotz, Frisch, von Cramon, &
Friederici, 2003), Kotz, Gunter, and Wonneberger (2005) tested
whether these patients might benefit from external regularity (oscillator), such as a rhythmically regular (metrical) musical prime.
This prime should stimulate internal oscillator set-ups and thus
help subsequent speech processing. Patients first listened to a
rhythmic prime (i.e., a sequence of a march) for 3 min, followed by
the language-testing blocks with syntactically correct and incorrect
sentences. The external rhythmic stimulation showed a compensatory effect and restored the P600 to syntactic violations in
patients with basal ganglia lesions (Kotz et al., 2005) and Parkinson’s disease (Kotz & Gunter, 2012). Note that both populations
have been shown to encounter difficulties in temporal processing
(e.g., rhythm, intervals; Grahn & Brett, 2009; Schwartze, Keller,
Patel, & Kotz, 2011).
Our aim was to test the potential influence of external rhythmic
stimulation on syntax processing in children with developmental
language deficits. This hypothesis was based on the work by Kotz
et al. (2003; Kotz & Gunter, 2012; Kotz et al., 2009) and further
supported by the view that developmental language disorders are
linked to a more general procedural deficit (Nicolson & Fawcett,
2007; Ullman, 2001; Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). In Ullman’s
(2001, 2004) “declarative/procedural” model, the procedural component concerns learning and processing of context-dependent
stimulus–response rule-like relations, particularly in temporal sequences (e.g., syntax, morphology, phonology, music). To support
the hypothesis of a procedural deficit, Ullman and Pierpont (2005)
list various deficits associated with SLI, such as processing of
syntax, morphology, and nonlinguistic deficits (temporal and
1
We are here referring to temporal processing with respect to sequencing, that is, to larger time scales than those proposed in Tallal’s hypothesis
of a rapid spectrotemporal processing deficit. Interestingly, the review of
Tallal and Gaab (2006), which discusses the benefits of musical training on
language and literacy skills, also indicates that musical training may
improve sequencing skills and attention, which may in turn influence
directly (or via rapid spectrotemporal processing) the processing of linguistic components (e.g., syllables) as well as language and literacy skills.
RHYTHM, SYNTAX, AND DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS
rhythmic processing).2 Our study was further motivated by Goswami’s (2011) recently proposed temporal sampling (oscillatory)
framework for developmental dyslexia and, by extension, for SLI.
Also referring to the dynamic attending theory (Large & Jones,
1999), this framework explains phonological and other observed
deficits via a deficit in temporal coding and attention.
The present study investigated the potential influence of a
musical rhythmic prime on the performance in a subsequent language task. We contrasted two musical primes (short musical
excerpts played by percussion instruments), for which meter extraction was either easy or difficult (referred to as regular or
irregular prime, respectively). In the experimental session, each
music presentation was followed by a block of experimental trials
of the language task that investigated syntax processing (i.e.,
procedure adapted from Kotz et al., 2005). Children were asked to
make grammaticality judgments on auditorily presented sentences
that were syntactically either correct or incorrect. If the rhythmicity of the musical prime can influence temporal attention (e.g., via
internal oscillators), and if this influence holds over the temporal
delay to the language task (i.e., music and language were not
presented simultaneously), then performance should be better after
the regular primes than the irregular ones (notably by reinforcing
processes underlying phonological processing, speech segmentation, and syntax processing).
The present study tested both children with SLI (Experiment
1A) and children with dyslexia (Experiment 1B). Children suffering from these language-learning impairments have normal range
nonverbal intelligence, adequate opportunity to learn, and do not
present any neurological and sensory disorders. The children in the
SLI group were characterized by a failure to develop ageappropriate receptive and/or expressive language skills since early
childhood. The children in the dyslexic group were characterized
by literacy deficits; in particular, the tested children were diagnosed with phonological or mixed dyslexia (not surface dyslexia).
Whereas the dyslexic children did not present comorbid SLI, some
of the SLI children also displayed literacy difficulties (as it is often
observed; Brizzolara et al., 2011; Catts et al., 2005). Whether
dyslexia and SLI are qualitatively distinct disorders or can be
considered as two points on a continuum is still matter of debate
(Bishop & Snowling, 2004). Our study was not designed to address this issue, but aimed to investigate whether musical primes
can influence language processing in the presence of syntactic and
phonological disorders as well as rhythmic processing deficits.
Given that syntactic disorders are more systematically present in
SLI than in dyslexia (Bishop & Snowling, 2004; Catts et al., 2005),
a greater impact of musical priming could be expected on the
grammaticality judgments for children with SLI than for children
with dyslexia.
Method
Participants
Experiment 1A included SLI children, and Experiment 1B included dyslexic children. For each patient group, we included two
specifically tailored groups of control children that were matched
for either chronological age (CA) or reading age (RA). Average
RA was based on reading scores obtained with a standardized
reading test, the Alouette test, which focuses on decoding mech-
123
anisms by requiring children to read sentences without semantic
support (Lefavrais, 1965). All children were French monolinguals.
None exhibited auditory deficits, as shown in the clinical assessment. None reported musical activity. None of the children in the
control groups reported a history of written or spoken language
impairments.
All SLI and dyslexic children were recruited from a neuropediatric hospital unit, a special school for severe language and learning disorders, or a speech therapist office. Diagnosis of a language
deficit and general neurological assessments were made by neuropsychologists or speech therapists (see details below). The SLI
and dyslexic children were not diagnosed as mentally retarded and
did not show nonverbal deficits. They were not diagnosed with
additional learning difficulties (e.g., dyspraxia, attentional deficits,
autistic spectrum disorder, or other neurological or psychiatric
disorders), except as indicated otherwise below. The evaluations
were based on a variety of French neuropsychological and language tests,3 with pathological scores being defined as scores that
are at least 2 standard deviations inferior to the population mean.
The experiment was approved by the French ethics committee
Comité de Protection de Personnes and informed consent was
obtained by the participants and their parents.
Experiment 1A: SLI children and control groups. Twelve
SLI children (8 boys, average CA: 9 years 6 months, SD ⫽ 23
months, range: 6 years 6 months – 12 years 11 months; average
RA: 7 years 8 months, SD ⫽ 17 months, range: 6 years 2
months – 10 years 11 months) were included in Experiment 1A.
Eight SLI children were diagnosed with a phonological–syntactic
syndrome (de Weck & Rosat, 2003) with verbal expression mainly
affected at phonological, syntactic, and semantic levels as assessed
by various batteries including at least word and pseudoword repetition, naming, morphosyntactic production, and phonemic fluency (see footnote 3). Four SLI children had both verbal expression and comprehension disorders, as assessed by vocabulary tests,
morphosyntactic tests, and comprehension of sentences (ELO,
EVIP, ECOSSE, N-EEL; see footnote 3). Four of the SLI children
were diagnosed with dyslexia, and one child was diagnosed with
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, but he received methylphenidate treatment.
Twenty control children were matched to the SLI children:
Twelve (seven boys) were matched for CA with the SLI children
2
Neural correlates of the procedural component in Ullman’s (2001,
2004) “declarative/procedural” model have been associated with the
frontal/basal-ganglia circuitry. In further support, Ullman and Pierpont
(2005) review data of SLI suggesting neural abnormalities of at least two
structures: the frontal cortex and the basal ganglia.
3
BALE (Batterie Analytique du Langage Ecrit: a series of tests investigating reading, spelling, and metaphonological skills in French), ELO
(Evaluation du Langage Oral: a series of tests assessing language production and comprehension of words and sentences), N-EEL (Nouvelles
Epreuves pour l’Examen du Langage: a set of tests designed to assess
language in children ages from 3 years 7 months to 8 years 7 months),
Déno 48 (a French naming test), TCG (a verbal production test requiring
3- to 9-year-old children to induce the end of a perceived sentence on the
basis of pictures), TVAP (Test de Vocabulaire Actif et Passif: 3- to
8-year-old children are required to define words), EDEI-R (Echelles Différentielles d’Efficience Intellectuelle—Forme Révisée: a series of tests to
assess intellectual efficiency in 3- to 9-year-old children), NEPSY (a
Developmental NEuroPSYchological Assessment designed for 3- to 12year-old children).
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PRZYBYLSKI ET AL.
(CA controls; average CA: 9 years 5 months, SD ⫽ 20 months,
range: 6 years 6 months – 11 years 11 months); eight (4 boys) were
matched for RA with the SLI children (RA controls; average RA:
7 years 2 months, SD ⫽ 11 months, range: 6 years 6 months – 8
years 8 months).4
Experiment 1B: Dyslexic children and control groups. Ten
dyslexic children (6 boys, average CA: 9 years 9 months, SD ⫽ 10
months, range: 8 years 6 months – 10 years 10 months, average RA:
7 years 7 months, SD ⫽ 10 months, range: 6 years 6 months – 8 years
10 months) were included in Experiment 1B. None of the children
was diagnosed with SLI, but all were diagnosed with dyslexia:
Eight children were diagnosed with phonological dyslexia, a clinical subtype characterized by dramatic impairment of the analytic,
nonlexical procedure in both reading and spelling, as reflected by
poor pseudoword reading, lexicalization errors, and frequent phonologically implausible reading and spelling errors, but few difficulties in reading and spelling (regular and irregular) familiar
words (Castles & Coltheart, 1993; Manis, Seidenberg, Doi,
McBride-Chang, & Petersen, 1996; Rowse & Wilshire, 2007).
Phonological dyslexia is also characterized by poor performance
on tests of phonological awareness (in the absence of SLI), which
contrasts this form of dyslexia from surface dyslexia (Hanley &
Gard, 1995). Two children were diagnosed with mixed dyslexia,
defined by impairments in an analytic nonlexical procedure and a
lexical reading procedure.
Eighteen control children were included in Experiment 1B: 10
(five boys) were matched for CA with the dyslexic children
(average CA: 9 years 10 months, SD: 10 months, range: 8 years 6
months – 10 years 10 months); eight (4 boys) were matched for
RA with the dyslexic children (average RA: 7 years 8 months,
SD ⫽ 12 months, range: 6 years 6 months – 8 years 10 months)
Note that the data of 10 of these 18 control children had been also
included in the control groups of Experiment 1A.
Materials
Musical stimuli. Two 32-s musical sequences were constructed. The two sequences contained the same number of tones,
but they differed in their rhythmic structure so that it was either
relatively easy or difficult to extract the underlying meter (referred
to as regular vs. irregular prime sequences; see Figure 1; http://
www-crnl.univ-lyon1.fr/bt-sound.html).5 The sequences were
played by two percussion instruments (i.e., a tam-tam at 175 Hz
and a maracas at 466 Hz). Each instrumental line was composed of
a section of eight beats of 500 ms, which was repeated eight times
to form the prime sequence.
The regular prime sequence had a simple rhythmic structure
with interonset intervals of 250 ms, 500 ms, 750 ms, or 1,000 ms
and one unit of 375 ms followed by 125 ms (i.e., creating an
interval of 500 ms). The chaining of the interonset intervals (in
milliseconds) over time for each instrument was 500, 750, 250,
500, 500, 750, 250, 500 for the tam-tam (see first line in Figure 1
top) and 375, 125, 500, 250, 250, 500, 500, 500, 1,000 for the
maracas (see second line in Figure 1 top). To extract the metrical
structure, listeners needed to find regular subdivisions of 125 ms
and then 250 ms, and build a hierarchy with the main beat every
500 ms, followed by another hierarchy level at 1,000 ms. The
hierarchy was reinforced by the simultaneous presentation of
events played by the two instruments on six of the eight beats in
the pattern. We selected the tempo of 500 ms based on the
developmental work by McAuley, Jones, Holub, Johnston, and
Miller (2006) on entrainment; they reported that the spontaneous
motor tempo of children from 8 to 10 years of age lies at about 521
ms (⫾61).
The irregular prime sequence had a rhythmic structure with
interonset intervals of 125 ms, 250 ms, 375 ms, 500 ms, 625 ms,
750 ms, or 1,375 ms. The chaining of the interonset intervals (in
ms) over time for each instrument was 625, 375, 375, 500, 375,
375, 1,375 for the tam-tam (see first line in Figure 1 bottom) and
375, 125, 750, 250, 625, 375, 500, 1,000 for the maracas (see
second line in Figure 1 bottom). The chaining of these intervals in
the pattern allowed the extraction of a regular subdivision at 125
ms, but the temporal occurrence of events as well as the less
frequent simultaneous presentations of events played by the two
instruments (i.e., three times) made it more difficult to build a
hierarchical metrical organization of beats.
Linguistic stimuli. The material was composed of 96 French
sentences that were grammatically either correct (48) or incorrect
(48). We first created 48 correct sentences and derived from each
correct sentence an incorrect sentence. The violations used were of
three different types (Gunter, Friederici, & Schriefers, 2000):
gender agreement (ⴱLe caméra filme les danseurs [ⴱThe(masculine)
camera(feminine) is filming the dancers]), number agreement
(ⴱLaura ont oublié son violon [ⴱLaura(3rd person, singular) have(3rd
ⴱ
person, plural) forgotten her violin]), and person agreement ( Les
ⴱ
baguettes sommes en bois [ Drumsticks(3rd person, plural) are(2nd
person, plural) made of wood]). The violation of gender agreement
affected the nominal group and the other violations affected the
verbal group. Each type of syntactic violation was represented by
eight sentences. Grammatical and ungrammatical sentences were
composed of an average of 6.1 words (range ⫽ 4 – 8) and an
average of 8.29 syllables (range ⫽ 6 –11); their duration was on
average 2,300 ms (⫾353).
To avoid that a given participant listened to the same sentence
in its grammatically correct and incorrect version, we split the 96
sentences into two lists (A and B) of 48 sentences. A grammatically correct sentence (presented in List A) was matched in number of words, number of syllables, number of letters, and the
words’ lexical frequency (based on the standard frequency index in
4
We acknowledge that the matching of reading age was not complete
between the reading age of the patient group and of the RA control group.
This was due to one SLI child with a higher reading age (131 months) than
his/her peers, and we missed including such a performant child in the RA
control group. Removing this SLI child dropped the standard deviation to
13, thus comparable to the RA control group (note that the group remains
matched to the CA group, with an average age of 9.43 years 5.18 months,
SD ⫽ 23). An overall ANOVA without this child confirmed the data
pattern of the entire group (notably the main effect of musical prime), F(1,
28) ⫽ 16.04, MSE ⫽ 10.67, p ⫽ .0004.
5
Fourteen nonmusician adults listened to the sequences (presented in
counterbalanced order) and judged on a scale from 1 to 10 how regular they
found each sequence (from 1 ⫽ very irregular to 10 ⫽ very regular) and
how easy they would find it to dance with each sequence (from 1 ⫽ very
difficult to 10 ⫽ very easy). The results clearly indicated the intended
difference between regular and irregular conditions: Average perceived
regularity was significantly stronger for the regular sequence (9.5 ⫾ 0.73)
than for the irregular sequence (3.31 ⫾ 2.33, p ⬍ .0001). Averaged ease to
dance with the sequence was also significantly stronger for the regular
sequence (9.0 ⫾ 1.67) than for the irregular sequence (3.0 ⫾ 1.93, p ⬍
.0001).
RHYTHM, SYNTAX, AND DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS
125
Figure 1. Musical score of the beginning of the regular prime (top) and the irregular prime (bottom). The
timelines under each score part indicate the onsets of each note (in milliseconds).
MANULEX, which is a database on words in children books; Lété,
Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, 2004) with another correct sentence
(presented in List B). Based on these lists, two experimental sets
were constructed: (1) 24 grammatically correct sentences chosen
from List A and 24 grammatically incorrect sentences from List B
and (2) 24 grammatically correct sentences chosen from List B and
24 grammatically incorrect sentences from List A. Each participant
worked on one of the sets. Sentences were spoken by a female
native speaker of French at a natural speed of production.
Apparatus
Musical sequences were built and recorded by Finale software.
Instruments were chosen from the instruments bank MakeMusic
GM and played by synthesizers “49 orchestra” for the tam-tam
sound and “41 standard” for the maracas sound. Sentences were
recorded with a Røde NT1 microphone in a sound-attenuated
booth and normalized in intensity using Audacity software. The
experiment was run on PsyScope software (Cohen, MacWhinney,
Flatt, & Provost, 1993) and participants used the USB Button Box
developed for this software. Musical sequences and linguistic
sentences were presented over headphones (SONY MDR V300).
Procedure
The 48 sentences were presented by blocks of six sentences,
with the constraint that each block contained three grammatically
correct sentences and three incorrect sentences. Before each of the
eight blocks, one of the two rhythmic prime sequences was presented (with four blocks preceded by a regular prime and four by
an irregular prime). The order of the primes and the blocks as well
as the order of the sentences in each block were randomized for
each participant.
Participants were asked to listen to the music and were shown a
picture on the computer screen (a black-and-white drawing, which
represented, e.g., a guitar playing music). At the end of the prime
sequence, a blue exclamation mark appeared on the screen to
indicate the beginning of the sentence. Participants were asked to
judge the grammaticality of the sentences. To facilitate the understanding of the required grammaticality judgment, the experimenter explained to the children that two dragons pronounced the
sentences: one who was never wrong and one who was always
wrong. At the end of the sentence, two pictures of dragons were
presented on the screen: a dragon who looked satisfied and a
dragon who looked puzzled. Participants answered by pressing one
of two buttons on the response box, one below each dragon. The
next sentence was triggered by the experimenter. At the beginning,
the organization of an experimental trial was illustrated with one
grammatically correct sentence.
Data Analyses
Performance was analyzed with signal detection theory calculating discrimination sensitivity with d= and response bias with c
for each participant and for each prime condition.6 These analyses
are based on the proportions of hits (i.e., proportion of correct
responses for ungrammatical sentences, p[hits]) and false alarms
(i.e., errors for grammatical sentences, p[FAs]) after regular and
irregular primes. d= is defined as z(p[hits]) – z(p[FAs]), and response bias c as ⫺0.5[z(p[hits]) ⴱ z(p[FAs])]; see Macmillan and
Creelman (1991) for more details. d= and c were analyzed by two
analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with musical prime (regular,
irregular) as the within-participant factor and group (children with
language disorders, CA controls, RA controls) as the betweenparticipants factor. The factor children with language disorders
referred to SLI children in Experiment 1A and dyslexic children in
Experiment 1B. To estimate effect sizes, we calculated partial 2
(Cohen, 1988). We further performed supplementary ANOVAs
6
The correction of the d= and c measures used .01 for cases without false
alarms and .99 for the maximum number of hits.
PRZYBYLSKI ET AL.
126
including gender as an additional between-participants factor, but
neither the main effect of gender nor its interactions with one of
the other factors reached significance (ps ⬎ .13).
Table 1
d= Data Pattern of Experiments 1A and 1B Averaged Over
Participants, by Musical Prime (Regular, Irregular)
Average d=
Results and Discussion
Group
Experiment 1A (SLI Children)
For d= (see Figure 2 left, and Table 1), the main effect of group
was significant, F(2, 29) ⫽ 8.19, p ⫽ .002, MSE ⫽ 4.77, partial
2 ⫽ .36. As expected, CA controls performed better than SLI
children and RA controls, F(1, 29) ⫽ 15.96, p ⫽ .0004, partial
2 ⫽ .36, whereas these two latter groups did not differ in their
performance level, p ⫽ .89. Note that performance for SLI children was above chance level after the regular prime (p ⫽ .004) and
after the irregular prime (p ⫽ .03). It is most interesting that the
main effect of musical prime was significant, F(1, 29) ⫽ 15.02,
p ⫽ .0005, MSE ⫽ 0.67, partial 2 ⫽ .34, and it did not interact
with group, p ⫽ .68. For all participant groups, performance was
better after the regular musical prime than after the irregular
musical prime.
The analysis of c (see Table 2) revealed that this effect of
musical prime was not accompanied by a difference in response
bias c. Only the main effect of group was significant, F(2, 29) ⫽
4.31, p ⫽ .03, MSE ⫽ 0.83, partial 2 ⫽ .23, but not the main
effect of musical prime, p ⫽ .43, nor their interaction, p ⫽ .34.
Additional analyses without the four SLI children who were also
diagnosed with dyslexia replicated the outcome of the entire
group: Notably, they confirmed a significant main effect of music
for d=, F(1, 21) ⫽ 6.45, MSE ⫽ 0.71, p ⫽ .02, partial 2 ⫽ .23, and
its absence for c, p ⫽ .51.
Given the large age range among patients and their CA matched
controls, we ran two further analyses: The difference in d= for
regular and irregular prime did not correlate with age, r(30) ⫽ .07;
Experiment 1A
SLI children
CA controls
RA controls
Experiment 1B
Dyslexic children
CA controls
RA controls
SE
Regular
prime
Irregular
prime
Regular
prime
Irregular
prime
1.64
3.89
1.9
0.9
3.29
0.84
0.45
0.58
0.49
0.37
0.59
0.43
3.8
4.47
2.84
2.66
3.9
2.33
0.66
0.42
0.53
0.52
0.63
0.75
Note. SLI ⫽ specific language impairment; CA ⫽ chronological agematched control; RA ⫽ reading age-matched control.
and we removed the three youngest SLI children and their matched
CA controls as well as the oldest one (in each group), leading to a
reduced age range (SLI, n ⫽ 8: average CA ⫽ 9 years 11 months,
SD ⫽ 14.53 months, range ⫽ 8 years 4 months ⫺ 11 years 10
months; CA controls, n ⫽ 8: average CA ⫽ 9 years 10 months,
SD ⫽ 13.38 months, range ⫽ 8 years 4 months ⫺ 11 years 4
months), but confirming the outcome of the entire participant
groups (i.e., main effect of musical prime), F(1, 21) ⫽ 20.57, p ⫽
.0002, and of group, F(2, 21) ⫽ 10.98, p ⫽ .0005, but no interaction, p ⫽ .99.
In sum, Experiment 1A showed that children’s grammaticality
judgments were influenced by the metricality of the musical prime
preceding the language presentation: Performance was better after
the regular musical prime than after the irregular prime. Although
the performance level of SLI children was lower than that of the
CA-matched control children, the SLI children also benefited from
5.00
Regular
Irregular
4.50
4.00
3.50
d'
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
SLI
CA
RA
children controls controls
Dyslexic CA
RA
children controls controls
Experiment 1a
Experiment 1b
Figure 2. d= data pattern of Experiments 1A and 1B averaged over participants, presented as a function of the
musical prime (regular, irregular) and the participant groups: specific language impairment (SLI) children in
Experiment 1A, dyslexic children in Experiment 1B, with their respective control groups matched for chronological age (CA) and reading age (RA). Error bars indicate between-participants standard errors.
RHYTHM, SYNTAX, AND DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS
Table 2
c Data Pattern of Experiments 1A and 1B Averaged Over
Participants, by Musical Prime (Regular, Irregular)
Mean
Group
Experiment 1A
SLI children
CA controls
RA controls
Experiment 1B
Dyslexic children
CA controls
RA controls
SE
Regular
prime
Irregular
prime
Regular
prime
Irregular
prime
0.29
⫺0.26
0.15
0.42
⫺0.56
0.03
0.21
0.31
0.11
0.15
0.26
0.09
⫺0.39
⫺0.21
0.14
⫺0.15
⫺0.72
⫺0.25
0.27
0.32
0.28
0.27
0.23
0.30
Note. SLI ⫽ specific language impairment; CA ⫽ chronological agematched control; RA ⫽ reading age-matched control.
the regularity of the musical prime. Furthermore, response biases
were overall relatively small, even though SLI children showed a
bias to respond “grammatical” and CA controls a bias to respond
“ungrammatical.” However, this group difference may be related
to expertise with language or an effect of schooling. Most important, bias was not significantly modulated by the type of musical
prime.
Experiment 1B (Dyslexic Children)
For d= (see Figure 2 and Table 1), the main effect of musical
prime fell just short of significance, F(1, 25) ⫽ 3.91, p ⫽ .059,
MSE ⫽ 1.92, partial 2 ⫽ .14, but it showed, as for Experiment
1A, that performance was better after the regular musical prime
than after the irregular musical prime. This effect did not interact
with group, p ⫽ .75. The main effect of group was only marginally
significant, F(2, 25) ⫽ 2.56, p ⫽ .097, MSE ⫽ 4.55, partial 2 ⫽
.17, but also suggested that CA controls performed better than
dyslexic children and RA controls, whereas these latter two groups
showed comparable performance levels. For the dyslexic children,
the analysis of c did not reveal any significant effects, ps ⬎ .18
(see Table 2).
In sum, the findings of Experiment 1B observed for dyslexic
children and their matched control groups were in agreement with
the result patterns observed in Experiment 1A for SLI children and
their matched control groups: Even though the main effect fell just
short of significance in Experiment 1B, performance after the
regular prime was also better than after the irregular prime for all
participant groups.
General Discussion
The present study investigated whether musical primes can
influence children’s performance in a subsequent language task,
which focused on syntax processing. The musical primes differed
in their temporal (metric) structures, being either regular or irregular. As predicted, we observed better performance after the regular prime than after the irregular prime. This difference was
observed for children with developmental language deficits (SLI,
dyslexia) and their matched control groups. Interestingly, the previously reported temporal processing deficits in children with
127
developmental language disorders, notably deficits in rhythm and
meter processing (Corriveau & Goswami, 2009; Thomson & Goswami, 2008; see also Huss, Verney, Fosker, Mead, & Goswami,
2011), did not hinder the influence of the prime’s temporal structure on the subsequent language task. Even SLI and dyslexic
children processed the temporal differences in the two musical
primes and the regular prime with its metrical structure benefits to
the grammaticality judgments compared with the irregular prime.
The effect size for this benefit of the regular prime over the
irregular prime (as indicated by partial 2) was higher for the
children with SLI than for the children with dyslexia (.34 vs. .14).
Although we have to acknowledge that we tested fewer dyslexic
children than SLI children (n ⫽ 10 vs. n ⫽ 12), supplementary
analyses on the SLI group (reducing the sample size by focusing
on a narrower age range, separating by gender as well as subsampling) confirmed the significance pattern for this patient group.7
The more pronounced benefit of the SLI group may be linked to
the stronger syntactic disorder in the case of SLI compared with
dyslexia (e.g., Catts et al., 2005). In particular, SLI children tested
in the current task showed weaker performance in the grammaticality task (average d= ⫽ 1.27) than did the dyslexic children
(average d= ⫽ 3.23).
Our finding is in agreement with previous work that has
shown beneficial effects of a metrical musical stimulus (e.g., a
marching rhythm) on syntax processing in patients with basal
ganglia lesions or Parkinson’s disease (Kotz & Gunter, 2012;
Kotz et al., 2005). For these patients—similar to the SLI and
dyslexic children— deficits in temporal processing have been
reported (Schwartze et al., 2011). Overall temporal processing
is impaired but not fully abolished. The decreased functionality
may particularly affect language processing, which requires
sequencing and segmentation (such as syntax here), because
rhythmic and metrical structures are less strongly implemented
in language than in music. Most important, the impaired system
can be activated by the musical stimuli with its clear metrical
structure. The regular events in the musical prime provide
predictable cues that may allow boosting and entraining internal
oscillators, which then benefit the sequencing and temporal
segmentation at the sentence level, thus favoring syntax processing. The regular prime improved children’s grammaticality
judgments (in comparison to the irregular prime); this is even
for SLI children for whom previous work has suggested a
sequencing deficit (Weinert, 1992) or a more general procedural deficit (Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). This deficit has been
attributed to impaired processing of grammatical structures and
temporal sequences—whether language (syntax, morphology,
phonology) or music (Corriveau & Goswami, 2009; Ullman,
2001; Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). Ullman and Pierpont (2005)
reviewed evidence for neural abnormalities in frontal cortex and
basal ganglia, both having been associated with structural processing (e.g., Grahn, 2009). Based on Ullman’s declarative and
procedural memory model, Nicolson and Fawcett (2007) have
further extended this framework and discussed SLI and dyslexia
7
We ran 12 additional ANOVAs subsampling the SLI group and its
matched CA group down to 10 children each. Each of these analyses
confirmed a main effect of musical prime (ps ⬍ .002) and group (ps ⬍ .02),
but no interaction.
128
PRZYBYLSKI ET AL.
together with other various developmental disorders in terms of
procedural learning difficulties.
Kotz et al. (2009) reviewed two pathways involved in nonmotor
functions, such as sequencing (i.e., formation of sensory predictions, segmentation of incoming auditory streams, syntax processing) and temporal attention: a basal– ganglia–pre-supplementary
motor area (SMA) circuitry and a cerebellar–thalamic–pre-SMA
pathway. These pathways would be involved in the perception of
sensory predictable cues (such as beats in metrical structures) and
the synchronization between internal oscillators and external
(stimulus) regularities (as suggested by the dynamic attending
theory; Jones, 1976). Deficits in one of the pathways, such as in
patients with basal ganglia lesions, can lead to syntactic processing
deficits (e.g., Frisch, Kotz, von Cramon, & Friederici, 2003; Kotz
et al., 2003). The stimulation of the system with highly regular
stimuli (e.g., musical sequences in Kotz et al., 2005), which may
be more efficient even for the impaired pathway, or via the
alternative pathway would allow compensating a sequencing deficit in sentence processing. This led Kotz et al. (2005) to promote
metrical stimulation as a therapeutic tool. For developmental language disorders, it has been reported that SLI and dyslexia include
abnormalities in regions of the frontal cortex (in particular Broca’s
area and premotor regions), with additional abnormalities in a
corticostriatal network in SLI and a corticocerebellar network in
dyslexia (see Nicolson & Fawcett, 2007, for a review). One may
now speculate that these anomalies would thus affect one of the
two pathways involved in sequencing and temporal attention, and
that a temporally regular (external) stimulation would benefit in
particular the unimpaired one, thus allowing the boosting of sequencing capacities.
The metrical prime also benefited the control groups in our
experiments: The clearly established regular temporal structure
in the musical material had a positive impact on syntactic
processing in children in the subsequent language task, whether
they experienced language difficulties or not. Based on Jones’s
framework of dynamic attending (e.g., Jones & Boltz, 1989),
the hypothesis is that the metrical structure of the musical
material allows orienting attention over time and allows developing expectations about the temporal occurrence of a next
event, which then facilitates processing, segmentation, and integration. As speech is inherently tied to time and requires
temporal processing and cognitive sequencing (see Kotz &
Schwartze, 2010), this modulation of temporal attention benefits both the healthy and impaired brain. The observed performance differences further suggest the importance of rhythm
processing in language processing. They can be linked to previous work suggesting that rhythm processing deficits lead to
deficits in language processing by, for example, impairing
suprasegmental information processing (e.g., Corriveau & Goswami, 2009; Thomson & Goswami, 2008). Although our present results cannot provide evidence for sequencing deficiencies
to be the core of language deficits in SLI and dyslexia (an
interesting question that was not directly assessed in this study),
they suggest that this kind of cognitive mechanism can be
improved—relatively quickly (and at least on an interim basis)— by nonlinguistic stimuli, which results in improved processing of syntactic information.
For basal ganglia patients (Kotz et al., 2005), the effect of the
musical prime was shown in the restoration of an ERP component
(the P600 following the perception of syntactic violations) that was
reported as missing in previous work (Kotz et al., 2003). For the
developmental language disorders investigated in the present
study, the effect of the musical prime was confirmed in the
comparison of two prime types (regular, irregular), thus showing a
relative facilitation between the two conditions: regular versus
irregular. However, this comparison does not yet allow conclusions about compensatory benefits of the regular prime in comparison to children’s performance without music. The rationale of
our experimental design followed previous linguistic and musical
priming research: studying first relative facilitation and then investigating costs and benefits compared with a baseline condition.
Due to difficulties in determining adequate baseline conditions
(see Jonides & Mack, 1984, and Tillmann, Janata, Birk, & Bharucha, 2003, for discussions of this difficulty for language and music
materials) and the not-yet-known temporal persistence of the musical prime effect over time (thus potentially contaminating a silent
baseline condition), our study started by investigating the possibility whether musical metrical structures may influence subsequent language processing. Now that this influence has been
observed (even though as relative facilitation), future research
needs to study the potential, compensatory benefits of music on
language performance by including the comparison with a potential baseline condition (e.g., using meaningless noise or environmental sound scenes) or by following an alternative approach, as
done via ERP measurements in Kotz et al. (2005). For example,
Sabisch et al. (2006) reported delayed or missing anterior negativities for the processing of syntactic and prosodic structures in
dyslexic children compared with controls. If a metrically regular
prime benefits syntax processing, the delay of the anterior negativity should be reduced or should vanish (compared with that of
the control children).
Our study provides new evidence that can be integrated in the
temporal sampling framework recently proposed by Goswami
(2011) for dyslexia and by extension for SLI. Speech processing
requires processing of amplitude envelopes at a rather low
frequency (reflecting the sequential rate of syllables and
words).8 The temporal sampling framework, which highlights
that oscillatory networks of neurons provide synchronous activity over different frequency bands, suggests impaired temporal sampling of the input at low-frequency oscillatory mechanisms (i.e., theta and delta rhythms, covering 1.5 to 10 Hz) in
children with developmental language disorders. Evidence can
be found in impaired processing of slow-frequency modulations
at 2 Hz (Witton et al., 1998) and impaired tapping performance
to a beat (particularly at 2 Hz; Thomson & Goswami, 2008) in
dyslexic children (see also Hämäläinen, Rupp, Soltész, Szücs,
& Goswami, 2012). Together with the dynamic attending theory
(e.g., Jones & Boltz, 1989) postulating internal oscillators guiding attention over time, Goswami (2011) suggests that the
impaired rhythmic entrainment leads to difficulties in develop8
In natural speech, syllables occur about every 200 ms, with stressed
syllables about every 500 ms (i.e., corresponding to a rate of 2 Hz). This
corresponds to the tempo of our musical primes, which was chosen based
on McAuley et al. (2006) for the tested age group’s preferred spontaneous
tempo. This leads to the need for future studies to manipulate the base
tempo of the regular and irregular musical primes to investigate whether
there might be some specificity related to frequency ranges.
RHYTHM, SYNTAX, AND DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS
ing attention over time, leading to deficits in syllabic segmentation and other sequential processes. This aspect allows integration of other approaches of developmental language
disorders that focus on attention, such as the sluggish attentionshifting hypothesis (Facoetti et al., 2010; Hari & Renvall,
2001). Goswami discusses the potential benefits of therapeutic
interventions or educational practices based on rhythm and
music as those might “entrain the Theta and Delta oscillatory
networks that are (by hypotheses) impaired in dyslexia” (p. 9).
In particular, she suggests that remediation based on rhythm
and music (e.g., matching syllable patterns to metrical structures in singing, playing instruments, or moving in time, working with metrical poetry, or singing nursery rhymes) might
impact language development and be particularly beneficial in
developmental language disorders. Together with this framework and other data showing positive effects of a musical
activity program (including rhythm skills) on phonological
skills and spelling performance (Overy, 2000) and also of
exposure to musical primes on syntactic processing (e.g., Kotz
et al., 2005), our study provides new grounds and motivations
for further testing the benefit of rhythmic stimulation on language processing and its underlying mechanisms. Providing
evidence for cross-domain effects (from music to language)
over time is encouraging and multiplies the possibilities of
using rhythmic stimulation in training or remediation programs,
in addition to accentuating rhythmic structures in linguistic
material itself (at the same time, as in poetry). This perspective
could also exploit the motivational advantages and pleasantness
that musical material might provide in a rehabilitation setting,
beyond its stimulating effect for impaired temporal processing
networks. Future adaptations need to test the potential impact
and benefit of the prior presentation of strongly metrical musical material on various linguistic subsequent tasks, which
require segmentation processes (see Bedoin et al., 2012, for a
reading task).
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Received December 28, 2011
Revision received November 1, 2012
Accepted November 8, 2012 䡲
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology Special Issue:
Psychopharmacology of Attention: The Impact of Drugs in an Age of
Increased Distractions
Edited by Anthony Liguori and Suzette M. Evans
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology will publish a Special Issue focused on
Psychopharmacology of Attention: The Impact of Drugs in an Age of Increased Distractions in October 2013. The goal of this special issue is to highlight progress made during
the past 15 years in understanding how licit and illicit drugs impact attention within the
context of prevailing contemporary distractions. Topics such as distracted driving, social
networking, animal and human models of multitasking, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder are just a few of the areas of relevance to this special issue.
Laboratories engaged in research in this area may submit review articles or primary research
reports to Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology to be considered for inclusion in this
Special Issue. Please contact the Guest Editor, Dr. Anthony Liguori, or the Editor, Dr. Suzette
Evans, directly (see below) with your topic, a draft title and a draft abstract before submitting
your manuscript. These will also us to create a dynamic and diverse issue on these topics.
Manuscripts should be submitted as usual through the APA Online Submission Portal, and the
cover letter should indicate that the authors wish the manuscript to be considered for publication in the Special Issue on Psychopharmacology of Attention. While we cannot guarantee
that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the final published special section, we
hope that you will consider submitting a manuscript for this Special Issue. Manuscripts
received no later than February 15, 2013 will be considered for inclusion in the Special Issue.
Questions or inquiries about the Special Issue can be directed to the Guest Editor of the
issue, Anthony Liguori, Ph.D., at aliguori@wakehealth.edu or the Editor, Suzette M.
Evans, Ph.D., at se18@columbia.edu.