Did you get the beat? Late proficient French-German learners extract strong-weak patterns in tonal but not in linguistic sequences

►In the current series of experiments, linguistic and non-linguistic segmentation strategies were investigated in parallel. ►The extraction of regular strong-weak patterns in speech depends on the sensitivity for trochaic stress units in the native language, hence, French late learners of German fail to detect a regular strong-weak pattern in contrast to German monolingual controls. ►In non-linguistic acoustic sequences (tones), trochaic stress units are preferably perceived, irrespective of subjects' native language. ►The current results are first electrophysiological evidence for domain specific processing of acoustic regularities.