Melodic perception skills predict Catalan speakers’ imitation abilities of unfamiliar languages
Musical perception skills have been shown to influence second language speech production. Likewise, working memory may also affect nonnative speech production abilities. However, very few studies have assessed their respective role in speech imitation abilities. The present study thus investigates t...
| Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | book part |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2022 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universitat de Lleida (UdL) |
| Repository: | Repositori Obert UdL |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositori.udl.cat:10459.1/469490 |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-178 https://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/469490 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Speech imitation Musical perception skills Working memory Melody |
| Summary: | Musical perception skills have been shown to influence second language speech production. Likewise, working memory may also affect nonnative speech production abilities. However, very few studies have assessed their respective role in speech imitation abilities. The present study thus investigates the predictive role of musical perception skills and working memory on speech imitation abilities of unfamiliar languages. Sixty-one adult Catalan speakers imitated twelve sentences in six languages that were unfamiliar to them. Participants’ music perception skills were tested by four PROMS-S subsets, namely accent, melody, pitch, and rhythm, and their working memory was measured by a forward digit span test. A linear regression analysis revealed that melodic perception skills were the unique predictor among all four musical perception subtests and that working memory was not a significant predictor. Our findings show that melodic perception skills are key in predicting the capability in imitating unfamiliar speech and thus may be important for learning foreign language pronunciation. |
|---|