Random Research #414: Musicians learn languages better

[roddy]

Because it really is that simple. 

 

Report in the Guardian:

 

If you learn to play an instrument as a child, you'll learn languages easier as an adult. And apparently (go back to the original research if you wish) you get these benefits even if you only did an hour or so a week. 

 

I mucked about on the guitar quite a bit as a teenager, not sure if that was too late to have any impact on my brain formation. Certainly doesn't feel like it's made me any more linguistically talented. 

 

What about everyone else? Do we have any child prodigies on here (Renzhe, I'm quite happy to believe you were a concert pianist at eight). Do you associate that with your easy language acquisition today?

[laurenth]

 

I mucked about on the guitar quite a bit as a teenager, not sure if that was too late to have any impact on my brain formation. Certainly doesn't feel like it's made me any more linguistically talented.

 

Same for me. As I've spent my life studying and translating languages, I've often been confronted with this cliché: Ah, you're good at languages, that's because you have a hear for music. I'm sceptical: although there was a time when I "mucked about" (nothing more elaborate) on the guitar quite a lot, I've always found, in all the languages I've learnt up to know, that my listening comprehension was my weakest point. For all the music I've played, my reading comprehension has always been better than the rest. I was going to add "as is the case for most language learners, I guess" but I know for a fact that some language learners do learn to listen and speak before or better than reading. Maybe they are better musicians than I am.

[OneEye]

If your study regimen heavily focuses on reading, your listening comprehension won't magically be better simply because you studied music. I'm not convinced that mucking around helps much either, but maybe so. However, I did my undergrad degree in music, and I really believe that the sensitivity to sound I developed from all the ear training that the degree required has helped me tremendously as far as picking up pronunciation and accent. But I consciously applied my training to the acquisition of a good accent, it didn't happen accidentally.

 

I have a friend who has been speaking Chinese for 20 years, has been living in Taiwan for nearly 10 and is doing a PhD here, who still has a pretty heavy accent and some serious tone problems. When I say my music training helped, others like to say "But he used to be in a band, and listen to his accent!" Not even close to being the same. He mucked around with a rock band while he was in high school, I went through pretty intensive training and played professionally for a few years.

[Guest realmayo]

Interesting article. I learned an instrument for a few years as a kid. Isn't there a theory that super-polyglots have an almost 'photographic memory' for sounds? For people without that abnormal ability, neuroplasticity suggests that studying music when young would give you a brain that better distinguishes and remembers sounds. Which would make learning a language much much easier.

 

There's also the idea that musicians have to bring together left hemisphere and right hemisphere tasks. Perhaps being good at that helps with languages (e.g. reading vs listening, I dunno). 

[Lu]

I played the piano a bit when I was a child, but it really was mainly a one hour a week situation. And my mom sung for me a lot. I have no idea if that has had any influence on how well I learn languages. I certainly like playing with language a lot more than I like playing music.

 

Can't read the original article as it is behind a pay/subscribe wall, and knowing the level of science reporting in newspapers, I'm afraid I'll remain rather skeptical of the claim until I see the article making a good point.

[li3wei1]

Both music and language learning involve practice, repetition, and overcoming performance anxiety. You could also argue that music is a language, that converting written notes to appropriate finger/lip/arm movements is not much different from learning to read out loud, and that once you've learned one language, the rest become easier.

[imron]

I never learnt an instrument as a kid - though my brother and sisters did.

[Touchstone57]

If it’s published in the Guardian, it must be true.

I’m left handed, and by virtue of being left handed I should be increublay inteallegent and ‘good at languages’, and artisaiccc, but cn’t be cetain.

 

I met quite a few Chinese high school students forcing themselves to write left handed in the belief it would make them more intelligent. I also mucked about on the guitar as a teenager..

 

I think a musical background won’t necessarily help you, I think sufficient interest and motivation will help you. Being able to distinguish sound and pitch can be useful, but you need to work hard in every aspect to achieve something. I believe adults can also train their ears in this respect.

 

If you aren’t interested in the first place, and don’t make a concerted effort to learn the sounds of a language over time, then a musical background won’t help much. If it’s published in the Guardian, it must be true.

I’m left handed, and by virtue of being left handed I should be increublay inteallegent and ‘good at languages’, and artisaiccc, but cn’t be cetain.

I met quite a few Chinese high school students forcing themselves to write left handed in the belief it would make them more intelligent. I also mucked about on the guitar as a teenager..

 

I think a musical background won’t necessarily help you, I think sufficient interest and motivation will help you. Being able to distinguish sound and pitch can be useful, but you need to work hard in every aspect to achieve something. I believe adults can also train their ears in this respect.

 

If you aren't interested in the first place, and don’t make a concerted effort to learn the sounds of a language over time, then a musical background won’t help much. 

[Hofmann]

I just read the abstract. I don't know where the Guardian gets all that stuff from that. It seems not much different from, for example, walking. You think "go over there" and not when and how strong every muscle has to contract.

 

I've played the piano since I was 6, violin since 13. I don't know if it's done anything for me. There are too many factors.

[tysond]

I do think that music learning has some impact which I believe is due to 

 

1. learning the value of discipline (tolerance to drills, daily practice as a proven technique to progress)

2. pure expansion of ability of your ears to listen better (e.g. transcribing pieces of music, copying/shadowing, tuning, prosody, pitch, rhythm)

3. reading ability in a different system (reading music itself)

4. generally exercising the brain and opening it up to wider stimulus, building a broader base of experiences to apply to future problems

 

Also, as a benefit, you can also learn to play music which is pretty cool.

 

However, it's worth noting the author is selling a book and a pack of CDs that you play to a 2 year old.

So... it's literally a case of "Stay at home ex-musician mother from Finland discovers one weird trick that can help you baby speak multiple languages!"

 

What a surprise that the weird trick she discovered happens to be related to a musical game from Finland, that she happens to sell.

And it only takes 1 hour a week, just like this workout program I've discovered!

[imron]

"Stay at home ex-musician mother from Finland discovers one weird trick that can help you baby speak multiple languages!"

Language teachers hate her!

[Ruben von Zwack]

Despite all the shortcomings I am inclined to like the theory, though. My parents sent me to some musical school for toddlers when I could barely walk, and it must have had some effect!

Not on my music playing, which is odd: although I had all the formal training and spent my brain's best years (up to to late teen) learning instruments and practising notation and harmony theories, I just suck at playing instruments. I can't even hold a rhythm.

The only reasonable explanation - if I don't want to write it off as wasted efforts - is that it was subconsciously boosting the language region of my brain all the time.

[kvetch]

Didn't work for me. Played violin from ages 5-14 and piano after that. All my language teachers hated me because I was just that awful at their subjects.

[Guest realmayo]

I don't really understand some of the scepticism. If someone has trained at music from a young age, his brain should be better at listening to and reproducing sounds. That should help you learn a language. Of course there will be other factors too. I doubt my desultory level of music studies had much impact.

 

subconsciously boosting the language region of my brain all the time.

 

Seems to be a theory that music came before language anyway: 

 

“Spoken language is a special type of music,” said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. “Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from language. But from a developmental perspective, we argue that music comes first and language arises from music.”

[imron]

If someone has trained at music from a young age, his brain should be better at listening to and reproducing sounds

Listening perhaps yes, but if you are reproducing sounds with your fingers (piano, violin, guitar etc) I don't think that will necessarily help with reproducing sounds of the language - even if you are reproducing sounds with your mouth (trumpet, clarinet, flute etc), it's still a different enough skill that I don't expect there would be much crossover.  The only thing that I imagine might be of much for reproduction of sounds is singing.

 

Ultimately though it comes down to practice.  Like an instrument, the more the practise a language, the better you'll get (assuming correct practise).

[li3wei1]

Listening perhaps yes, but if you are reproducing sounds with your fingers (piano, violin, guitar etc) I don't think that will necessarily help with reproducing sounds of the language - even if you are reproducing sounds with your mouth (trumpet, clarinet, flute etc), it's still a different enough skill that I don't expect there would be much crossover.

 

This is all academic anyway, but just for the sake of argument -

When we talk, we use our lungs, vocal cords, tongue, jaw, and lips. There may be other things in there too, and that's not counting the 'body language' stuff - eyebrows, hands, shoulders, etc. Depending on what instrument we're playing, we use a different set of muscles, with various amounts of overlap with the above, but it's still essentially looking at written symbols and turning them into a complex set of muscle movements to produce a sound. Most of the crossover, I imagine, is in the brain, decoding the written symbols and sorting out which muscles to activate, and also listening to the sound as it comes out and making whatever adjustments are necessary to get it right.

[OneEye]

Listening perhaps yes, but if you are reproducing sounds with your fingers (piano, violin, guitar etc) I don't think that will necessarily help with reproducing sounds of the language - even if you are reproducing sounds with your mouth (trumpet, clarinet, flute etc), it's still a different enough skill that I don't expect there would be much crossover.  The only thing that I imagine might be of much for reproduction of sounds is singing.

 

Being able to hear where your own pronunciation differs from that of a native speaker makes it much easier to fix your pronunciation though. If you hear that your pronunciation is wrong, you can experiment with shaping your mouth until it sounds right, and then you have to just practice saying it right until it's automatic. In my experience, many people with heavy foreign accents can't hear that they sound different from native speakers. If you can, the battle is mostly over.

 

But again, there's a big difference between "I took piano lessons for years and was terrible at it" and "I underwent extensive musical training at a very high level." I've known people who have acquired mechanical proficiency on an instrument who still can't carry a melody. It's quite literally not possible to come out of a music degree and be "tone-deaf." There's an order of magnitude difference between the two.

[imron]

In my experience, many people with heavy foreign accents can't hear that they sound different from native speakers. If you can, the battle is mostly over.

I agree.  Which is why I recommend people to record themselves and listen back to it.  Often people don't realise how they sound when they speak.  The simple act of recording helps with that immensely.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, I agree with OneEye. A (say) violinst has to hear and remember a sound and then reproduce it, monitoring and adjusting output until it matches input. How can that (if done a lot, at a young age, and to a high level etc et) not be of help to the average language learner?

 

 

Ultimately though it comes down to practice.  Like an instrument, the more the practise a language, the better you'll get (assuming correct practise).

 

Well, yes and no. The idea is that these involve related skills, therefore you pracise one, the other benefits. There's a reason retired cricketers often get quite good at gold, etc.

[Hofmann]

With all these anecdotes, I felt the urge to look for something significant. Here are some abstracts that my rough search yields.
 
Paraskevopoulos, E., Kuchenbuch, A., Herholz, S. C., & Pantev, C. (2012). Statistical Learning Effects in Musicians and Non-Musicians: An MEG Study.Neuropsychologia, 50(2), 341-349.

This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned tone sequence. The effect of long-term musical training in this ability is investigated by means of comparison of MMN in musicians to non-musicians. Both groups (musicians and non-musicians) showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) response to the deviants and this response did not differ amongst them neither in amplitude nor in latency. Another interesting finding of this study is that both groups revealed a significant difference between the standards and the deviants in the response of P50 and this difference was significantly larger in the group of musicians. The increase of this difference in the group of musicians underlies that intensive, specialized and long term exercise can enhance the ability of the auditory cortex to discriminate new auditory events from previously learned ones according to transitional probabilities. A behavioral discrimination task between the standard and the deviant sequences followed the MEG measurement. The behavioral results indicated that the detection of deviance was not explicitly learned by either group, probably due to the lack of attentional resources. These findings provide valuable insights on the functional architecture of statistical learning.

 
Herholz, S. C., Boh, B., & Pantev, C. (2011). Musical training modulates encoding of higher-order regularities in the auditory cortex. European Journal Of Neuroscience, 34(3), 524-529. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07775.x

We investigated the effect of long-term musical training on the time course of development of neuronal representations within the auditory cortex by means of magnetoencephalography. In musicians but not in nonmusicians, pre-attentive encoding of a complex regularity within a tone sequence was evident by a constant increase of the pattern mismatch negativity within < 10 min. The group difference was more pronounced in the left hemisphere, indicating stronger plastic changes in its structures supporting temporal analysis and sound pattern encoding. The results suggest an effect of long-term musical training on short-term auditory learningprocesses. This has implications not only for cognitive neuroscience in showing how short-term and long-term neuronal plasticity can interact within the auditory cortex, but also for educational and clinical applications of implicit auditory learning where beneficial effects of (musical) experience might be exploited.

 
Besson, M., Chobert, J., & Marie, C. (2011). Transfer of training between music and speech: Common processing, attention, and memory. Frontiers In Psychology, 2(94), doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00094

After a brief historical perspective of the relationship between language and music, we review our work on transfer of training from music to speech that aimed at testing the general hypothesis that musicians should be more sensitive than non-musicians to speech sounds. In light of recent results in the literature, we argue that when long-term experience in one domain influences acoustic processing in the other domain, results can be interpreted as common acoustic processing. But when long-term experience in one domain influences the building-up of abstract and specific percepts in another domain, results are taken as evidence for transfer of training effects. Moreover, we also discuss the influence of attention and working memory on transfer effects and we highlight the usefulness of the event-related potentials method to disentangle the different processes that unfold in the course of music and speech perception. Finally, we give an overview of an ongoing longitudinal project with children, aimed at testing transfer effects from music to different levels and aspects of speech processing.

 
Habib, M., & Besson, M. (2008). Langage, musique et plasticité cérébrale: Perspectives pour la rééducation. Revue De Neuropsychologie, 18(2), 103-126.

This article summarizes the main evidence to date as to the links between brain and music, considered as both a unique human skill and a special mental activity apt to modify the proper organ from which it has arisen. Musical expertise, necessarily linked to a most often early and intensive learning, is associated with neuroanatomical distinctive features which have been demonstrated owing to the advent of modern neuroimaging techniques, especially magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These distinctive features are present in several brain regions, all being more or less involved either in gestural motor skill (therefore probably related to the use of an instrument) or in auditory perception. There is also growing evidence that learning music possesses more general effects on brain plasticity, as demonstrated in recent work finding increased learning abilities in musicians. One important notion, related to this topic, is that of a probable "sensitive period", believed to stand at about 7 years of age, beyond which music-induced structural changes as well as learning effects are less pronounced. These data are discussed in the perspective of using musical training in children with specific learning disorders, especially language and reading disorders. In particular, preliminary results having shown some influence of music learning on language-based reading skills hold the promise of interesting perspectives in the domain of "neuropaedagogy".