Perception of rhythmic grouping depends on auditory experience

Many aspects of perception are known to be shaped by experience, but others are thought to be innate universal properties of the brain. A specific example comes from rhythm perception, where one of the fundamental perceptual operations is the grouping of successive events into higher-level patterns,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2008-10, Vol.124 (4), p.2263-2271
Main Authors: Iversen, John R., Patel, Aniruddh D., Ohgushi, Kengo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adolescent
Adult
Audition
Biological and medical sciences
California
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Cues
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Japan
Language
Multilingualism
Perception
Periodicity
Pitch Discrimination
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Signal Detection, Psychological
Young Adult
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Summary:Many aspects of perception are known to be shaped by experience, but others are thought to be innate universal properties of the brain. A specific example comes from rhythm perception, where one of the fundamental perceptual operations is the grouping of successive events into higher-level patterns, an operation critical to the perception of language and music. Grouping has long been thought to be governed by innate perceptual principles established a century ago. The current work demonstrates instead that grouping can be strongly dependent on culture. Native English and Japanese speakers were tested for their perception of grouping of simple rhythmic sequences of tones. Members of the two cultures showed different patterns of perceptual grouping, demonstrating that these basic auditory processes are not universal but are shaped by experience. It is suggested that the observed perceptual differences reflect the rhythms of the two languages, and that native language can exert an influence on general auditory perception at a basic level.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/1.2973189