How does Music Reading Expertise Modulate Visual Processing of English Words? An ERP study

Tze Kwan Li, Hei Yan Veronica Chan, Luhe Li, Janet H. Hsiao

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Music notation and English word reading have similar visual processing requirements. It remains unclear how the two skills influence each other. Here we investigated the modulation of music reading expertise on visual processing of English words through an ERP study. Participants matched English real, pseudo, and non-words preceded by musical segments or novel symbol strings in a sequential matching task. Musicians showed smaller N170 amplitude in response to English non-words preceded by musical segments than by novel symbol strings in the right hemisphere. This effect was not observed in real or pseudo-words, or in any of non-musicians' responses. Similar to English non-words, musical segments do not have morphological rules or semantic information, giving rise to this modulation effect. This finding suggested a shared visual processing mechanism in the right hemisphere between music notation and English non-word reading, which may be related to serial symbol processing as suggested by previous studies.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationComputational Foundations of Cognition
Pages2561-2566
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196760
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes
Event39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017 - London, United Kingdom
Duration: 26 Jul 201729 Jul 2017

Publication series

NameCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition

Conference

Conference39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period26/07/1729/07/17

Keywords

  • EEG
  • English word reading
  • Music reading expertise
  • event-related potential (ERP)

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