Language Priming by Music and Speech: Evidence of a Shared Processing Mechanism Available to Purchase

Some sounds from music and language follow domain-specific syntactic rules and may be processed by distinct brain regions. However, domain-general mechanisms may explain some connections between music and language. The current study tested how rate differences in music and language perception influence the subsequent production of speech. In two experiments, participants were primed with fast or slow sentences (Experiment 1) or melodies (Experiment 2) and then produced novel picture descriptions. Participants’ rate of production was influenced by the rate of the prime, both within-domain (language-language) and cross-domain (music-language). A shared mechanism for domain-general rate processing is proposed.