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Electrophysiological Study of Algorithmically Processed Metric/Rhythmic Variations in Language and Music

EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing volume 2007, Article number: 030194 (2007) Cite this article

Abstract

This work is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists from the fields of audio signal processing, phonetics and cognitive neuroscience aiming at studying the perception of modifications in meter, rhythm, semantics and harmony in language and music. A special time-stretching algorithm was developed to work with natural speech. In the language part, French sentences ending with tri-syllabic congruous or incongruous words, metrically modified or not, were made. In the music part, short melodies made of triplets, rhythmically and/or harmonically modified, were built. These stimuli were presented to a group of listeners that were asked to focus their attention either on meter/rhythm or semantics/harmony and to judge whether or not the sentences/melodies were acceptable. Language ERP analyses indicate that semantically incongruous words are processed independently of the subject's attention thus arguing for automatic semantic processing. In addition, metric incongruities seem to influence semantic processing. Music ERP analyses show that rhythmic incongruities are processed independently of attention, revealing automatic processing of rhythm in music.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, CNRS, Marseille, France

    Sølvi Ystad, Snorre Farner, Gregory Pallone & Richard Kronland-Martinet

  2. Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS, Marseille Cadex, 13402, France

    Cyrille Magne, Mitsuko Aramaki & Mireille Besson

  3. Psychology Department, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, 37127, USA

    Cyrille Magne

  4. IRCAM, 1 Place Igor Stravinsky, Paris, 75004, France

    Snorre Farner

  5. France Télécom, Lannion Cedex, 22307, France

    Gregory Pallone

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  1. Sølvi Ystad
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  2. Cyrille Magne
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  3. Snorre Farner
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Correspondence to Sølvi Ystad.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Ystad, S., Magne, C., Farner, S. et al. Electrophysiological Study of Algorithmically Processed Metric/Rhythmic Variations in Language and Music. J AUDIO SPEECH MUSIC PROC. 2007, 030194 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/30194

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