Does rhythmic priming improve grammatical processing in Hungarian‐speaking children with and without developmental language disorder?

Abstract

Abstract Research has described several features shared between musical rhythm and speech or language, and experimental studies consistently show associations between performance on tasks in the two domains as well as impaired rhythm processing in children with language disorders. Motivated by these results, in the current study our first aim was to explore whether the activation of the shared system underlying rhythm and language processing with a regular musical rhythm can improve subsequent grammatical processing in preschool-aged Hungarianspeaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Second, we investigated whether rhythmic priming is specific to grammar processing by assessing priming in two additional domains: a linguistic but non-grammatical task (picture naming) and a non-linguistic task (nonverbal Stroop task). Third, to confirm that the rhythmic priming effect originates from the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm and not the negative effect of the control condition, we added a third condition, silence, for all the three tasks. Both groups of children showed better performance on the grammaticality judgment task in the regular compared to both the irregular and the silent conditions but no such effect appeared in the non-grammatical and non-linguistic tasks. These results suggest that 1) rhythmic priming can improve grammatical processing in Hungarian, a language with complex morphosyntax, both in children with and without DLD, 2) the effect is specific to grammar and 3) is a result of the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm. Research Highlights 6-year-old Hungarian-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder perform better on a grammatical task subsequent to exposure to a regular rhythm vs. an irregular rhythm/silence The effect of regular rhythm is specific: it improves performance on a grammatical task but not on a word retrieval or a non-linguistic task Difference between performance following regular vs. irregular rhythm originates from the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm (not the negative effect of the irregular rhythm) The results highlight the importance of rhythm in speech processing, and point towards a possible intervention tool in language disorders

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