Subproject implementation

This subproject aims to investigate the potential overlap as well as unique features of language and music. As a starting point we chose to focus on what these two domains might share, namely syntax. Much accepted in the field of music cognition is the theory proposed by Patel (1998; 2003), known as the Shared Syntactic Integration Resources Hypothesis (SSIRH).

This hypothesis suggests that, despite distinct representation of their elements, e.g., chords and words, language and music might share a common parser. This parser could be understood as a domain general computational mechanism responsible for the structural integration of linguistic and musical elements. In spite of plenty of supporting evidence, only recently the SSIRH has been challenged (Perruchet & Poulin-Charronnat, 2013). It has been argued that shared attentional resources rather than a common parser could account for the difficulty increase during simultaneous language and music syntactic processing. By understanding the mechanisms behind syntactic processing in language and music, we expect to comprehend if and which of these mechanisms may be common to or rather distinct in both domains.

In a second step, we will focus on what is believed to be particular to language and music, such as their cognitive representations. With comparable proficiency in these two domains, an overlap of their elements’ representations could be found and even extended to other domains, such as the domain of numbers and objects.

Publications 

• Roncaglia-Denissen, M. P., Schmidt-Kassow, M., Heine, A., and Kotz, S. A. (in press). "On the impact of L2 speech rhythm on syntactic ambiguity resolution ."　Second Language Research.  
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M. Paula, Maren Schmidt-Kassow, and Sonja A. Kotz. (2013). Speech rhythm facilitates syntactic ambiguity resolution: ERP evidence.　PloS one,　8(2), e56000. 
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M. P., Schmidt-Kassow, M., Heine, A., Vuust, P., & Kotz, S. A. (2013). Enhanced musical rhythmic perception in Turkish early and late learners of German.　Frontiers in psychology,　4. 
• Schmidt-Kassow, M., Roncaglia-Denissen, M. P., and Kotz, S. A. (2011). "Why pitch sensity matters: event-related potential evidence of metric and syntactic violation detection among Spanish late learners of German."　Frontiers in psychology　2 (2011).

Conferences

• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Bouwer, F., Honing, H. (2014). Investigating long-distance dependencies in language and music. Talk presented at the ICMPC13-APSCOM5. Seoul, South Korea.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M., Heine, A., & Kotz, S.A. (2012). Using rhythm in L2 to facilitate syntactic ambiguity resolution: When is it too late to learn it?' Poster presented at the annual Neurobiology of Language Conference. San Sebastián, Spain.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M. & Kotz, S.A. (2012). Syntactic ambiguity processing: How rhythm facilitates disambiguation. Talk presented at 5^thPsycholinguistics in Flander (PiF). Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M. & Kotz, S.A. (2011). Age of Acquisition or inter-individual differences: what drive syntactic ambiguity resolution? Talk presented at the annual MNARS Conference. Rostock, Germany.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M. & Kotz, S.A. (2011). Evidence of metric and syntactic violation detection among Spanish late learners of German: An ERP study. Talk presented at 53rd Annual German Experimental Psychology Meeting (TeaP). Halle (Saale), Germany.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M. & Kotz, S.A. (2011). Evidence of metric and syntactic violation detection among Spanish late learners of German: An ERP study. Poster presented at the RPPW 13. Leipzig, Germany.
• Roncaglia-Denissen, M.P., Schmidt-Kassow, M. & Kotz, S.A. (2010). Event-Related Potentials Reveal that L1 Phonology affects L2 rhythm perception. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neurosciences society. San Francisco, USA.

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