TY - GEN A1 - Abboub, Nawal A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - An exploration of rhythmic grouping of speech sequences by french- and german-learning infants T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambicpattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias-called the lambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants' grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 427 KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - grouping KW - iambic-trochaic law KW - perceptual biases KW - french-learning infants KW - german-learning infants Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407201 IS - 427 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Abboub, Nawal A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - An Exploration of Rhythmic Grouping of Speech Sequences by French- and German-Learning Infants JF - Frontiers in human neuroscienc N2 - Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambic pattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias—called the Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL)–has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants’ grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - grouping KW - iambic-trochaic law KW - perceptual biases KW - french-learning infants KW - german-learning infants Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00292 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 10 SP - 6707 EP - 6712 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Agus, Trevor A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Language Experience Affects Grouping of Musical Instrument Sounds JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society KW - Cross-linguistic KW - French KW - German KW - Auditory perception KW - Music KW - Rhythmic grouping Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12300 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 40 SP - 1816 EP - 1830 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Native language affects rhythmic grouping of speech JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - Perceptual attunement to one's native language results in language-specific processing of speech sounds. This includes stress cues, instantiated by differences in intensity, pitch, and duration. The present study investigates the effects of linguistic experience on the perception of these cues by studying the Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL), which states that listeners group sounds trochaically (strong-weak) if the sounds vary in loudness or pitch and iambically (weak-strong) if they vary in duration. Participants were native listeners either of French or German; this comparison was chosen because French adults have been shown to be less sensitive than speakers of German and other languages to word-level stress, which is communicated by variation in cues such as intensity, fundamental frequency (F0), or duration. In experiment 1, participants listened to sequences of co-articulated syllables varying in either intensity or duration. The German participants were more consistent in their grouping than the French for both cues. Experiment 2 was identical to experiment 1 except that intensity variation was replaced by pitch variation. German participants again showed more consistency for both cues, and French participants showed especially inconsistent grouping for the pitch-varied sequences. These experiments show that the perception of linguistic rhythm is strongly influenced by linguistic experience. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4823848 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 134 IS - 5 SP - 3828 EP - 3843 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - GEN A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Early prosodic acquisition in bilingual infants BT - the case of the perceptual trochaic bias T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language before 12 months, as shown by the emergence of a trochaic bias in English-learning infants between 6 and 9 months (Jusczyk et al., 1993), and in German-learning infants between 4 and 6 months (Huhle et al., 2009, 2014), while French-learning infants do not show a bias at 6 months (Hohle et al., 2009). This language-specific emergence of a trochaic bias is supported by the fact that English and German are languages with trochaic predominance in their lexicons, while French is a language with phrase-final lengthening but lacking lexical stress. We explored the emergence of a trochaic bias in bilingual French/German infants, to study whether the developmental trajectory would be similar to monolingual infants and whether amount of relative exposure to the two languages has an impact on the emergence of the bias. Accordingly, we replicated Hohle et al. (2009) with 24 bilingual 6-month-olds learning French and German simultaneously. All infants had been exposed to both languages for 30 to 70% of the time from birth. Using the Head Preference Procedure, infants were presented with two lists of stimuli, one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /GAba/ with word-initial stress (trochaic pattern), the second one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /gaBA/ with word-final stress (iambic pattern). The stimuli were recorded by a native German female speaker. Results revealed that these French/German bilingual 6-month olds have a trochaic bias (as evidenced by a preference to listen to the trochaic pattern). Hence, their listening preference is comparable to that of monolingual German-learning 6-month-olds, but differs from that of monolingual French-learning 6-month-olds who did not show any preference (Noble et al., 2009). Moreover, the size of the trochaic bias in the bilingual infants was not correlated with their amount of exposure to German. The present results thus establish that the development of a trochaic bias in simultaneous bilinguals is not delayed compared to monolingual German-learning infants (Hohle et al., 2009) and is rather independent of the amount of exposure to German relative to French. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 435 KW - bilinguals KW - infants KW - language KW - prosody KW - lexical stress KW - dominance effects Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407225 IS - 435 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Early Prosodic Acquisition in Bilingual Infants: The Case of the Perceptual Trochaic Bias JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language before 12 months, as shown by the emergence of a trochaic bias in English-learning infants between 6 and 9 months (Jusczyk et al., 1993), and in German-learning infants between 4 and 6 months (Huhle et al., 2009, 2014), while French-learning infants do not show a bias at 6 months (Hohle et al., 2009). This language-specific emergence of a trochaic bias is supported by the fact that English and German are languages with trochaic predominance in their lexicons, while French is a language with phrase-final lengthening but lacking lexical stress. We explored the emergence of a trochaic bias in bilingual French/German infants, to study whether the developmental trajectory would be similar to monolingual infants and whether amount of relative exposure to the two languages has an impact on the emergence of the bias. Accordingly, we replicated Hohle et al. (2009) with 24 bilingual 6-month-olds learning French and German simultaneously. All infants had been exposed to both languages for 30 to 70% of the time from birth. Using the Head Preference Procedure, infants were presented with two lists of stimuli, one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /GAba/ with word-initial stress (trochaic pattern), the second one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /gaBA/ with word-final stress (iambic pattern). The stimuli were recorded by a native German female speaker. Results revealed that these French/German bilingual 6-month olds have a trochaic bias (as evidenced by a preference to listen to the trochaic pattern). Hence, their listening preference is comparable to that of monolingual German-learning 6-month-olds, but differs from that of monolingual French-learning 6-month-olds who did not show any preference (Noble et al., 2009). Moreover, the size of the trochaic bias in the bilingual infants was not correlated with their amount of exposure to German. The present results thus establish that the development of a trochaic bias in simultaneous bilinguals is not delayed compared to monolingual German-learning infants (Hohle et al., 2009) and is rather independent of the amount of exposure to German relative to French. KW - bilinguals KW - infants KW - language KW - prosody KW - lexical stress KW - dominance effects Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00210 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 SP - 1753 EP - 1802 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Serres, Josette A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Effect of bilingualism on lexical stress pattern discrimination in french-learning infants JF - PLoS one N2 - Monolingual infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language around 6 to 9 months of age, a fact marked by the development of preferences for predominant prosodic patterns and a decrease in sensitivity to non-native prosodic properties. The present study evaluates the effects of bilingual acquisition on speech perception by exploring how stress pattern perception may differ in French-learning 10-month-olds raised in bilingual as opposed to monolingual environments. Experiment 1 shows that monolinguals can discriminate stress patterns following a long familiarization to one of two patterns, but not after a short familiarization. In Experiment 2, two subgroups of bilingual infants growing up learning both French and another language (varying across infants) in which stress is used lexically were tested under the more difficult short familiarization condition: one with balanced input, and one receiving more input in the language other than French. Discrimination was clearly found for the other-language-dominant subgroup, establishing heightened sensitivity to stress pattern contrasts in these bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. However, the balanced bilinguals' performance was not better than that of monolinguals, establishing an effect of the relative balance of the language input. This pattern of results is compatible with the proposal that sensitivity to prosodic contrasts is maintained or enhanced in a bilingual population compared to a monolingual population in which these contrasts are non-native, provided that this dimension is used in one of the two languages in acquisition, and that infants receive enough input from that language. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030843 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 7 IS - 2 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Rhythmic grouping biases in simultaneous bilinguals JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French-German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals. KW - simultaneous bilingualism KW - universal bias KW - rhythm KW - rhythmic grouping KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000140 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 23 IS - 5 SP - 1070 EP - 1081 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Effects of experience with L2 and music on rhythmic grouping by French listeners T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Rhythm perception is assumed to be guided by a domain-general auditory principle, the Iambic/Trochaic Law, stating that sounds varying in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds varying in duration are grouped as weak-strong. Recently, Bhatara et al. (2013) showed that rhythmic grouping is influenced by native language experience, French listeners having weaker grouping preferences than German listeners. This study explores whether L2 knowledge and musical experience also affect rhythmic grouping. In a grouping task, French late learners of German listened to sequences of coarticulated syllables varying in either intensity or duration. Data on their language and musical experience were obtained by a questionnaire. Mixed-effect model comparisons showed influences of musical experience as well as L2 input quality and quantity on grouping preferences. These results imply that adult French listeners' sensitivity to rhythm can be enhanced through L2 and musical experience. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 450 KW - rhythmic grouping KW - second language acquisition KW - prosody KW - musicality KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413786 IS - 450 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Effects of experience with L2 and music on rhythmic grouping by French listeners JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition. KW - rhythmic grouping KW - second language acquisition KW - prosody KW - musicality KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000425 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 19 SP - 971 EP - 986 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER -