This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed isfor the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator.The use of lexical tone in one's native language alters how speakers produce and perceive pitch in language. Moreover, the brains of tone (T) language speakers respond differently than non-tonal (NT) language speakers to perceived lexical tone (Gandour, Wong and Hutchins, 1998). It is unclear, however, whether such differences correlate with differences in pitch perception in non-linguistic contexts, such as music. The current research explores how experience with tone language affects discrimination of non-linguistic pitch and pitch intervals. We analyzed both discrimination accuracy and the timing of corresponding neural processes using event related brain potentials (ERP) comparing Ts and NTs on two tasks - pitch discrimination (PD) and pitch-interval (ID) discrimination. Twenty-five native speakers of Mandarin Chinese or Vietnamese and 25 non-tonal-language speakers, matched by age, musical ability and gender, judged pairs of tones (PD) and pairs of pitch intervals (ID) that either differed or not in pitch while a scalp electroencephalogram was recorded. Overall, Ts were significantly more accurate on both tasks than NTs. Ts were significantly more accurate than NTs in discriminating all pitch differences (PD), ranging from as small as 7 to as large as 200 cents. Interval discrimination was a more difficult task for both groups, Ts were significantly more accurate than NTs at discerning a difference between two pitch intervals when the difference was at least 100 cents or larger. We present parallel ERP data comparing amplitude and latency differences on the P300 and earlier negative potentials between the two groups on each task.
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