The Relationship Between L2 Phonological Processing and Early Musical Training in Adult Bilinguals

Abstract

Bilinguals who speak English as their second-learnt (L2), yet dominant language from a young age, have been previously shown to experience difficulties in adulthood when dealing with spoken English (i.e., phonological processing) compared to native monolinguals. The present study investigated whether the processing disadvantage in this group of bilinguals could be modulated by engagement in early musical training, a practice that, like phonological processing, requires the complex manipulation of sounds. To this end, performance on three English auditory processing tasks (phoneme deletion, spelling-to-dictation, and auditory comprehension) was measured in early L2-dominant bilingual and native English monolingual adults who had or had never received early musical training. The processing difficulties that were detected in bilingual adults without musical training were completely absent in those who had received formal musical training as children, such that performance was matched with their monolingual counterparts. The results indicate that early musical training has the potential to be an effective long-term intervention for individuals who experience weakness in phonological processing.