Effects of musical experience on the Thai rate-varied vowel length perception

Musical experience has been demonstrated to play a significant role in the perception of non-native speech contrasts. The present study examined whether or not musical experience facilitated the normalization of speaking rate in the perception of non-native vowel length contrasts. Musicians and non-musicians were first briefly familiarized with Thai vowel length distinctions before completing identification and AX discrimination tasks with items contrasting in vowel length at three speaking rates. Results revealed that musicians significantly outperformed non-musicians at identifying and discriminating non-native rate-varying length distinctions, suggesting that their attunement to rhythmic and temporal information in music transferred to facilitating their ability to perceive non-native temporal speech contrasts at varying speaking rates.