HONOLULU, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- A study by U.S. and Japanese scientists suggests native languages influence the way people organize non-language sounds into rhythms.

John Iversen and Aniruddh Patel of the Neuroscience Institute in San Diego and Kengo Ohgushi of the Kyoto City University of Arts in Kyoto, Japan, say people in different cultures perceive different rhythms in identical sequences of sound. That, they say, provides evidence that exposure to certain patterns of speech can influence perceptions of musical rhythms.
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