The Influence Of Ancient Chinese Poetic Experience On The Syntactic Processing Of Music Hierarchy

Musical syntax refers to a set of regularities which organize discrete elements into musical sequence.According to syntactic rules,small structural units are combined to form units with a larger time scale,and the large units are combined to form the hierarchical structure of music.Previous studies have found that listeners have the ability to process different hierarchical structures of musical syntax,and this ability can be improved through musical training.As two of the most important communication systems of human beings,music and language are closely related.Among different language carriers,ancient Chinese poetry,as a special language form with rhythmic characteristics,has distinctive musical characteristics.Then,can the learning experience of ancient Chinese poetry affect individuals' syntactic processing ability of different musical hierarchical structures?In this study,we first used behavioral and ERP techniques to explore the influence of ancient Chinese poetry experience on the musical syntactic processing of different hierarchical structures by setting an experimental design of 2(subject type: poetic experience group,control group)× 3(syntactic type: syntactically reasonable condition,low-level syntactically unreasonable condition,and high-level syntactically unreasonable condition).In the behavioral study,participants rated their conclusiveness using a nine-point scale after listening to each piece of music.The results found that the musical syntactic processing of different hierarchical structures was modulated by the poetic experience,which showed that the score of conclusiveness in the poetic experience group and the control group was significantly higher under the syntactically reasonable condition than under the low-level syntactically unreasonable condition,and the difference in the poetic experience group was greater.The score of conclusiveness in the poetic experience group was significantly higher under the syntactically reasonable condition than under the high-level syntactically unreasonable condition,but there was no significant difference between the two conditions in the control group.In addition,the scores of conclusiveness under the low-level syntactically unreasonable condition was lower in both groups than under the high-level syntactically unreasonable condition.In the ERP study,participants listened to music while watching a silent movie without subtitles.The implicit task was to detect the abnormal timbre in the musical sequences by pressing a button,and the EEG data of the participants were recorded at the same time.The results showed that in the early stage,compared with the syntactically reasonable condition,both groups induced an ERAN effect under the lowlevel syntactically unreasonable condition,but there was no significant difference between the two groups.Under the condition of high-level syntactically unreasonable condition,only the poetic experience group induced the ERAN effect.In the late stage,both groups induced a N5 effect under low-level syntactically unreasonable condition compared with syntactically reasonable condition,and there was no significant difference in the amplitude of N5;Under the condition of high-level syntactically unreasonable condition,only the poetic experience group induced the N5 effect.In addition,compared with the high-level syntactically unreasonable condition,the control group induced a greater ERAN effect in the low-level syntactically unreasonable condition.In conclusion,the behavioral and ERP results indicated that both the poetic experience group and the control group can detect low-level syntactic violations in the early stage and integrate them in the late stage,but the poetic experience group had certain advantages in the processing of low-level syntactic information.In addition,the poetic experience group was able to detect and integrate high-level syntactic violations,while the control group was unable to perform high-level syntactic processing.And it was more difficult for the two groups to process high-level syntax than low-level syntax.This study reflects from the levels of behavioral and electrophysiological that the experience of ancient Chinese poetry can improve the individual's syntactic processing ability of different musical hierarchical structures.