Neural Correlates of Processing Syntax in Music and ... - PubMan

Experiment III 125
periment IV – where the subgroups were better matched with regard to these variables –
a group difference between musically trained and non-musically trained children was
found for the processing of musical and linguistic syntax. It suggests that this group
difference is relatively independent of such variables as intelligence and parental education.
Stimuli and paradigm
Experimental paradigm
EEG data were recorded in two experimental sessions investigating either a violation of
musical syntax or a violation of linguistic syntax. The order of the music and the language
sessions was counter-balanced across participants within each group.
The stimuli for the music experiment were the same as in Experiment II. The paradigm
was slightly changed. Firstly, to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the EEG measurements
a further part was added to the experiment. In this first part, children sat in front
of a monitor and looked at a fixation cross (attentive part). The second part was the
same as in Experiment I and II, i.e. the children saw a silent movie (non-attentive part).
Both parts had a duration of around 17 min. Between the two parts of each session subtests
of an intelligence test (Tewes et al., 2000) were performed. Secondly, additional 18
sequences consisting of one chord played by a deviant instrument were presented. In
both parts of the experiment, the children had to react with a key press whenever they
heard a deviant instrument (to control for their attention). 23
The language experiment employed a well-established paradigm to investigate the
processing of linguistic syntax in adults (Friederici et al., 1993) or in children (Hahne et
al., 2004). In this paradigm, sentences were presented that were syntactically either
correct or incorrect. These sentences consisted of at least four words that had the same
grammatical function, i.e. an article, a noun, an auxiliary and a past participle (see Figure
11-1). The correct sentences consisted only of these four words. A syntactic violation
was introduced by sentences in which a preposition appeared after the auxiliary and
was directly followed by a past participle, thereby leading to a phrase structure violation.
Because the preposition indicates the beginning of a prepositional phrase – necessarily
consisting of a preposition and a noun phrase (e.g., noun or adjective plus noun) –
this sequence of words creates a clear word category violation. Filler sentences that
consisted of the whole prepositional phrase (i.e. preposition followed by a noun phrase)
23
Such task would have not been feasible in 30 months old children and would have been to attentiondemanding
for the five year old children (specifically those with SLI). Thus, this task was not used in Experiment
I and II. Further, since the primary focus of this study was to investigate the processing of musical
syntax and there were relatively few trials with deviant instruments or the deviant voice timbre, the
MMN response was not evaluated.