Abstract
Excerpts from French operatic songs were used to evaluate the extent to which language and music compete for processing resources. Do these two dimensions conflict? Are they integrated into a single percept? Or are they independent? The final word of each excerpt was either semantically congruous or incongruous relative to the prior linguistic context and was sung either in or out of key. Participants were asked to detect either the semantic or the melodic incongruity (single task) or both (dual task). We predicted a dual-task deficit if these tasks conflicted and no deficit if they were either independent or integrated. In order to distinguish between these last two outcomes, trial-by-trial contingency analyses were also computed, predicting no correlation if the tasks were conflicting or independent, a positive correlation under the assumption of integration and a negative correlation if dividing attention is impossible. Our results show similar levels of performance in single and dual tasks and no correlation between dual-task judgments, thus suggesting that semantic and melodic aspects of language are processed by independent systems. In addition, a comparison between musicians and nonmusicians shows that these conclusions are independent of musical expertise.
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This work was supported by grants from the Medical Research Council of Canada to I.P. and from the Groupement d’Intérêt Scientifique, “Science de la Cognition” (1995—1998) to M.B., E.B., and M. Habib. I.P. was supported by a fellowship from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Quebec. This research was conducted while F.F. was a postdoctoral student in the Psychology Department of the University of Montreal, supported by a fellowship from the Fyssen Foundation.
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Bonnel, AM., Faita, F., Peretz, I. et al. Divided attention between lyrics and tunes of operatic songs: Evidence for independent processing. Perception & Psychophysics 63, 1201–1213 (2001). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194534
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194534