Rhythm perception among acquisition, tuning and loss

State of the art and some reflections.

Abstract

The infant shows keen perceptive abilities and high responsiveness to languages in terms of both rhythmic and prosodic stimulations. However, during its first year, the scope of the infant’s perceptive ability gradually narrows down, finally tuning into the typical acoustic traits of its native language and into the rhythmic and melodic features of the musical background provided by its cultural environment. This ability of accurately perceiving rhythm seems to be impaired in subjects with linguistic disorders: people affected by Dyslexia or Specific Language Impairment in fact show problems in rapid temporal processing. In this regard, a brief overview of the literature about rhythm perception will pinpoint significant analogies between acquisition, tuning and loss processes.