Bridging music and speech rhythm: rhythmic priming and audio-motor training affect speech perception

Following findings that musical rhythmic priming enhances subsequent speech perception, we investigated whether rhythmic priming for spoken sentences can enhance phonological processing - the building blocks of speech - and whether audio-motor training enhances this effect. Participants heard a metrical prime followed by a sentence (with a matching/mismatching prosodic structure), for which they performed a phoneme detection task. Behavioural (RT) data was collected from two groups: one who received audio-motor training, and one who did not. We hypothesised that 1) phonological processing would be enhanced in matching conditions, and 2) audio-motor training with the musical rhythms would enhance this effect. Indeed, providing a matching rhythmic prime context resulted in faster phoneme detection, thus revealing a cross-domain effect of musical rhythm on phonological processing. In addition, our results indicate that rhythmic audio-motor training enhances this priming effect. These results have important implications for rhythm-based speech therapies, and suggest that metrical rhythm in music and speech may rely on shared temporal processing brain resources.