Challenging prior evidence for a shared syntactic processor for language and music

Category

Journal Article

Authors

Perruchet, P., Poulin-Charronnat, B.

Year

2013

Title

Challenging prior evidence for a shared syntactic processor for language and music

Journal / book / conference

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Abstract

A theoretical landmark in the growing literature
comparing language and music is the shared syntactic integration
resource hypothesis (SSIRH; e.g., Patel, 2008),
which posits that the successful processing of linguistic
and musical materials relies, at least partially, on the mastery
of a common syntactic processor. Supporting the SSIRH,
Slevc, Rosenberg, and Patel (Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review 16(2):374–381, 2009) recently reported data showing
enhanced syntactic garden path effects when the sentences
were paired with syntactically unexpected chords,
whereas the musical manipulation had no reliable effect on
the processing of semantic violations. The present experiment
replicated Slevc et al.’s (2009) procedure, except that
syntactic garden paths were replaced with semantic garden
paths. We observed the very same interactive pattern of
results. These findings suggest that the element underpinning
interactions is the garden path configuration, rather
than the implication of an alleged syntactic module. We
suggest that a different amount of attentional resources is
recruited to process each type of linguistic manipulations,
hence modulating the resources left available for the processing
of music and, consequently, the effects of musical
violations.

Issue

20

Pages

310-317

Keywords

Music cognition . Attention . Modularity . Language comprehension

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