Interactive Effects of Language and Musicianship on musical skills: a cross cultural study

Music and speech are distinct and universal elements of human cultures which use similar cognitive processes like acoustic cues and systematic sound-symbol representations. This may explain the bidirectional influences of music and language in terms of transfer of abilities from one domain to the other. The current research study aims to understand the interaction of language, music and musical testing scales. The musical abilities of 609 participants speaking five languages Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese and Danish were measured by an objective listening performance test, named the Musical Ear Test (MET) and a self-administered subjective questionnaire, the Gold-MSI. The influence of formal musical training was controlled. The data for this study (N=609) has been compiled from previously collected data by several labs. The data was analyzed through Repeated Measures ANCOVA analysis conducted on the SPSS software. The result implicates that language experience does not play a role in the overall musical abilities. However, tonal language speakers scored better at the melody test than rhythm test of MET and non-tonal language speakers scored better at the rhythm test than the melody test of MET. This showed that features of language like tonality and prosody plays a moderating role in the two subparts of music - melody and rhythm. Finally, it also showed difference in musical abilities results based on the type of subjective and or objective musical assessment. This research study with its large sample size across several languages supports the hypothesis on the association between these two cognitive domains. Key words: Language, Musical abilities, Cross cultural study, MET, Gold-MSI