Do music and language share the same resources?

The interest in the relationship between music and language is a long-standing one. While Lerdahl & Jackendoff in their seminal book on the generative theory of tonal music built mostly on insights of metrical phonology of the time, more recent studies draw attention to the parallels with current minimalist syntactic theory rather than phonology. However, there are compelling reasons to consider music and language as two distinct cognitive systems. Recent findings in the neuroscience of music suggest that music is likely a cognitively unique and evolutionary distinct faculty (e.g., Peretz & Colheart 2003). This is referred to as the modularity-hypothesis.

This position can be contrasted with the resource-sharing hypothesis that suggests music and language share processing mechanisms, especially those of a syntactic nature, and that they are just distinct in terms of the lexicon used (Patel 2003). For this hypothesis there is now quite some evidence (see, e.g., Slevc et al., 2009). That study showed 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.

However, last week a new study was published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (Perruchet & Poulin-Charronnat, 2012) that not only replicated the results of the former study, but also tested semantic garden paths, with – surprisingly – similar effects. The researchers suggest that the mechanism that might in fact underpin these interactions is the ‘garden path configuration’, rather than the implication of an alleged syntactic module (as is suggested by the resource-sharing hypothesis). It might well be that a different amount of attentional resources is recruited to process the linguistic manipulations and as such modulating the resources left available for the processing of music.

 Perruchet P, & Poulin-Charronnat B (2012). Challenging prior evidence for a shared syntactic processor for language and music. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review PMID: 23180417

Peretz, I., & Coltheart, M. (2003). Modularity of music processing Nature Neuroscience, 6 (7), 688-691 DOI: 10.1038/nn1083

Patel, A. (2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain Nature Neuroscience, 6 (7), 674-681 DOI: 10.1038/nn1082
 

Interested in a PhD or Postdoc position?

As of today, Leiden University, University of Amsterdam, and the Meertens Institute are looking for several PhD and Postdoc candidates for an ambitious research project starting February 1, 2013.

(See links below on those related to music cognition.)

In various domains of cognitive science, a new paradigm holds that humans and non-human animals are born with a small set of hard-wired cognitive abilities that are task-specific, language-independent, and non-species-specific. These core knowledge systems are innate cognitive skills that have the capacity for building mental representations of objects, persons, spatial relationships, numerosity, and social interaction. In addition to core knowledge systems, humans possess species-specific, uniquely human abilities such as language and music.

The ‘core knowledge’ paradigm challenges scholars in the humanities to ask the question how nurture and culture build on nature. This project examines the way in which innate, non specifically human, core knowledge systems for object representation, number, and geometry constrain cultural expressions in music, language, and the visual arts. In this research program, four domains of the humanities will be investigated from the point of view of core knowledge:

Subproject 1:  Music Cognition        
PhD & Postdoc, teamleader: Prof.dr H. Honing

Subproject 2:  Language and Number              
PhD & Postdoc, teamleader: Prof.dr S. Barbiers

Subproject 3:  Visual Arts and Geometry
PhD & Postdoc, teamleaders: Prof.dr.ir M. Delbeke & Prof.dr.ir C. van Eck

Subproject 4:  Poetry, Rhythm, and Meter
PhD & Postdoc, teamleader: Prof.dr M. van Oostendorp

Deadline for applications: 23 November 2012.

For more information see research proposal.

See also related entries. 

Can we know the evolution of human cognition?

According to Dick Lewontin (evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator) there is no way to know the evolution of cognition. He argued that we should ‘give up the childish notion that everything that is interesting about nature can be understood. [..] It might be interesting to know how cognition (whatever that is) arose and spread and changed, but we cannot know. Tough luck.’ (Lewontin, 1998:130)

In the study of the evolution of music cognition, we will have to take into account this critique. So, do we better stop right now, or is there a way to deal with this criticism? (See also Bolhuis & Wynne, 2009.)

While it became quite popular to address music cognition from an evolutionary perspective, there is still little agreement on the idea that music is in fact an adaptation, that it influenced our survival or that it made us sexually more attractive. Music appears to be of little use. It doesn’t quell our hunger, nor do we live a day longer because of it, so why arguing that music is an adaptation?

Are there indeed no arguments to show that music has played a more direct and shaping role in man’s evolutionary development? Or should music be considered as a sexually selected trait, a trait that evolved to attract partners rather than to improve survival chances? Or is music, as Pinker suggested, no more than a pleasant side effect of more important functions, such as speech and language?

Recently a number of interesting papers appeared (see references below) on the possibilities and impossibilities (Heyes, 2012; part of a special issue by The Royal Society dedicated to this topic) and the prospects and pitfalls of studying the evolution of cognition, music cognition being no exception (Honing & Ploeger, 2012; Marcus, 2012).

See also the Science Daily.

Heyes, C. (2012). New thinking: the evolution of human cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367 (1599), 2091-2096 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0111

Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012). Cognition and the Evolution of Music: Pitfalls and Prospects Topics in Cognitive Science, 4 (4), 513-524 DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01210.x

Marcus, G. (2012). Musicality: Instinct or Acquired Skill? Topics in Cognitive Science, 4 (4), 498-512 DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01220.x

Synesthesia as an alternative explanation of a chimps' exceptional memory?

Have a look at this video. (N.B. it is played back at normal speed)



After the numbers 1 through 9 make a split-second appearance on a computer screen, the chimp, Ayumu, gets to work. His index finger moves quickly across the screen, tapping white squares where the numbers had appeared, in order. Ayumu’s talent caused a quite a stir when researchers first reported it (Matsuzawa, 2009).

In an upcoming Trends in Cognitive Sciences essay, Nicholas Humphrey floats a different explanation for Ayumu’s superlative performance: Ayumu might have a curious brain condition that allows him to see numbers in colors. A simple experiment could reveal whether Ayumu is synesthetic: Changing the white square to colored squares would throw him off if he was relying on colors to order the numbers. According to ScienceNews Matsuzawa, who declined to comment directly on Humphrey’s theory, has no plans to test this.

Nicholas Humphrey (2012). ‘This chimp will kick your ass at memory games – but how the hell does he do it?’ Trends in Cognitive Science DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.05.002

Tetsuro Matsuzawa (2009). Symbolic representation of number in chimpanzees Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 19 (1), 92-98 DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2009.04.007

What is the role of core knowledge in music and language?

From 29 May 2012 through 1 Jun 2012 at The Lorentz Center in Leiden the workshop Core Knowledge, Language and Culture will be held.

This workshop will address the relation between core knowledge, language, music, and culture, with a view to assessing the current understanding of these questions for a theory of the mind/brain. We hope that the participants – scholars from fields as diverse as psychology, linguistics, neurobiology, neurolinguistics, music cognition, and cognitive anthropology – will contribute to defining a research program that may address both new and as yet unresolved research questions in this area.

To give one example, it is puzzling that a notion such as recursion (and the cognate notions of Merge or successor function) seems to play a role in apparently unrelated domains such as number/arithmetics, language, and music. Both linguistic and nonlinguistic quantification seem to be built on shared primitives. Such issues are often related to the (dis)similarity or (dis)continuity between the animal and the human domain. The question arises whether core knowledge of number constitutes an intriguing exception to the discontinuity thesis, with potential ramifications for the representation of time and space in the spirit of Kant.

The organizers of the workshop will be pleased to facilitate an open and fruitful debate on these topics. See for more information the Lorentz Center website.

What is the relation between core knowledge systems, music, and language?

On Thursday 24 May 2012, 11.00 – 12.30 there wil be a seminar at NIAS Campus on the Horizon research project Knowledge and Culture that was recently submitted to NWO for funding. In this project, we intend to study the relationship between innate cognitive capacities that are not specific for humans, so-called core knowledge systems, and innate cognitive capacities that are uniquely human, such as language and music.

Numbers (by Johan Rooryck)
The core knowledge system for number, for instance, has been argued to contain two nonverbal subsystems that are present in both newborn infants and animals. The Approximate Number System (ANS) compares the numerosities of distinct sets without individuating their members. The Object Tracking System (OTS) yields representations of small numbers of objects, i.e. 1 to 3 (perhaps 4), and does not work on sets larger than 4. Linguistic evidence suggests that the split between OTS and ANS is reflected in the language system, and that children acquire numbers in a sequence.

Music (by Henkjan Honing)
We have known for some time that babies possess a keen perceptual sensitivity for the melodic, rhythmic and dynamic aspects of speech and music: aspects that linguists are inclined to categorize under the term ‘prosody’, but which are in fact the building blocks of music. Only much later in a child’s development does he make use of this ‘musical prosody’, for instance in delineating and subsequently recognizing word boundaries. Henkjan Honing will make a case for ‘illiterate listening’, the human ability to discern, interpret and appreciate musical nuances already from day one, long before a single word has been uttered, let alone conceived. It is the preverbal and preliterate stage that is dominated by musical listening.

The lecture is followed by an open discussion.

Johan Rooryck is the Distinguished Lorentz Fellow 2011/12, and Henkjan Honing holds a KNAW-Hendrik Muller Chair in Music Cognition and is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Musicology at the University of Amsterdam.