The rhythmic priming effect in second language perception appears reliant on individuals’ musical background

Exposure to musical rhythms has been shown to influence the perception of subsequently presented speech. Until now, this effect has only been studied in native language (L1) processing. The present study investigated whether rhythmic priming could also benefit second language (L2) processing. A musical rhythmic priming experiment was designed based on previous studies in L1 children. Over two experiments, 66 L2 adult speakers of French were asked to detect grammatical errors in naturally spoken French sentences. Sentences were either preceded by a regular or an irregular musical rhythmic prime. We also assessed participants’ French language level, rhythmic perception abilities, and musical training. In Experiment 1, participants from various L1 backgrounds were recruited. In Experiment 2, only participants with a Latin native language were recruited. For both experiments, grammaticality judgments did not differ after regular versus irregular rhythmic primes. However, grammaticality judgments correlated significantly with rhythmic abilities, suggesting that participants with better rhythm perception were better at grammaticality judgment tasks. Moreover, musicians were better at detecting grammatical errors than those who had not received music training. We also found that the rhythmic priming effect (better grammatical judgments after regular than after irregular rhythms) increased with the number of years of musical training, suggesting that regular rhythmic primes may improve L2 perception in particular for musically trained participants. The results offer promising perspectives on the use of musical rhythmic primes as a means of improving language skills in second language acquisition, and on the potential impact of musical training on language processing.