Korean Journal of Cognitive Science (인지과학)

The Korean Society for Cognitive Science (한국인지과학회)
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The effect of lyrical and non-lyrical background music on different types of language processing - An ERP study

배경음악 및 가사가 실시간 언어처리에 미치는 영향 - 사건 관련 전위 연구

  • Received : 2020.12.17
  • Accepted : 2020.12.17
  • Published : 2020.12.31
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Abstract

People read in different settings, including when music is playing in the background. Whether the presence of music facilitates, hinders, or does not affect language processing is an on-going debate in the current literature. The present study used ERPs to examine the influence of music on orthographic, semantic, and syntactic processing by inspecting P2, N400, and P600 responses, respectively. A total of 60 participants judged the correctness of visually presented sentences while listening to music with lyrics, music without lyrics, or in silence. The results showed that the P2 and P600 effects were larger in the silent condition than in the music-with-lyrics condition, while there were no N400 differences among the conditions. This indicates that only lyrical music interferes with orthographic and syntactic language processing, while it has no, or minimal, effect on semantic processing. The results are discussed in relation to the background music interference effect.

우리는 사람들이 음악을 들으면서 책을 읽거나 학습활동을 하는 경우를 자주 발견하게 된다. 이러한 배경음악이 언어처리 과정에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지에 대해 그동안 활발한 논의가 진행됐다. 하지만 음악의 언어처리에 대한 영향성은 아직까지 명확히 밝혀져 있지 않은 상황에 있다. 본 연구는 사건관련전위(ERP)를 활용하여, 각 언어의 처리 과정-표기 정보 처리, 의미 정보 처리, 통사 정보 처리에 따라 나타나는 배경음악의 효과를 분석하고 이를 통해 음악이 언어처리에 미치는 영향성을 규명하고자 하였다. 총 60명의 피험자를 세 가지 실험조건그룹(가사 있는 음악 조건, 가사 없는 음악 조건, 무 음악 조건)으로 구분하고, 각 언어처리 과정에 해당하는 문장 자극을 제시하고 이에 대한 뇌파를 측정하였다. 실험 결과, 무음악 조건에 비해 가사 있는 음악 조건에서 표기 처리를 반영하는 P2와 통사 처리를 반영하는 P600의 진폭이 유의미하게 낮게 나타났다. 이에 반해, 의미 처리 과정을 반영하는 N400은 조건 간의 차이가 발견되지 않았다. 이러한 결과는 가사 있는 음악이 표기 처리 과정과 통사 처리 과정을 방해하는 한편, 의미 처리 과정에는 영향을 미치지 않는다는 점을 시사한다.

Keywords

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