The rhythmic priming effect in second language perception appears reliant on individuals’ musical background

Exposure to musical rhythms has been shown to influence the perception of subsequently presented speech. Until now, this effect has only been studied in native language (L1) processing.The present study investigated whether rhythmic priming could also benefit second language (L2) processing. A musical rhythmic priming experiment was designed based on previous studies in L1 children.

Over two experiments, L2 adult speakers of French were asked to detect grammatical errors in naturally spoken French sentences. Sentences were either preceded by a regular or an irregular musical rhythmic prime. We also assessed participants' French language level, rhythmic perception abilities, and musical training. In Experiment 1, 34 participants from various L1 backgrounds were recruited. In Experiment 2, 33 participants with a Romance-family L1 were recruited.

For both experiments, grammaticality judgments did not significantly differ after regular versus irregular rhythmic primes. However, in collapsing both experiments, grammaticality judgments correlated significantly with rhythmic abilities, suggesting that participants with better rhythm perception were better at grammaticality judgment tasks. Moreover, with the same French level, musicians were better at detecting grammatical errors than those who had not received music training.

We also found that the rhythmic priming effect (better grammatical judgments after regular than after irregular rhythms) increased with the number of years of musical training, suggesting that regular rhythmic primes may improve L2 perception in particular for musically trained participants.

These results suggest some interesting connections between music training, second language learning, and rhythmic priming, that can be explored in future research.