Strings Versus Keys: A Comparison of Violinists, Pianists, and Nonmusicians in Lexical Tone Perception and Tone Word Learning

The results indicated that music-to-language transfer in tone word learning hinges on the type of musical instrument. Theoretically, there is a need to introduce elements of higher level linguistic processing and selectivity into the Overlap, Precision, Emotion, Repetition, and Attention hypothesis. Practically, the study suggests the potential of violin training in facilitating nonnative tone word learning.