Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

An interesting study…

From a paper published in Development Science for May.

Compared musical pitch perception of young US children enrolled in Mandarin-language immersion education to their peers enrolled in English-only education at the same school. Mandarin-immersion education is associated with children’s enhanced ability to discriminate musical pitch, even when differences in working memory are controlled for. Mediation analyses revealed lexical tone accuracy for the most discernable trials mediated the relationship between immersion education and musical pitch sensitivity. These results provide support for language-to-music perceptual near transfer, grounded in shared pitch-processing mechanisms.

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