Divided attention between lyrics and tunes of operatic songs: evidence for independent processing

Abstract

Excerpts from French operatic songs were used to evaluate the extent to which language and music compete for processing resources. Do these two dimensions conflict? Are they integrated into a single percept? Or are they independent? The final word of each excerpt was either semantically congruous or incongruous relative to the prior linguistic context and was sung either in or out of key. Participants were asked to detect either the semantic or the melodic incongruity (single task) or both (dual task). We predicted a dual-task deficit if these tasks conflicted and no deficit if they were either independent or integrated. In order to distinguish between these last two outcomes, trial-by-trial contingency analyses were also computed, predicting no correlation if the tasks were conflicting or independent, a positive correlation under the assumption of integration and a negative correlation if dividing attention is impossible. Our results show similar levels of performance in single and dual tasks and no correlation between dual-task judgments, thus suggesting that semantic and melodic aspects of language are processed by independent systems. In addition, a comparison between musicians and nonmusicians shows that these conclusions are independent of musical expertise.