Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

The iambic-trochaic law has been proposed to account for the grouping of auditory stimuli: Sequences of sounds that differ only in duration are grouped as iambs (i.e., the most prominent element marks the end of a sequence of sounds), and sequences that differ only in pitch or intensity are grouped as trochees (i.e., the most prominent element…