Difficulties with Pitch Discrimination Influences Pitch Memory Performance: Evidence from Congenital Amusia

Jiang, Cunmei; Lim, Vanessa K.; Wang, Hang; Hamm, Jeff P.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079216

Cited by 32 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…3b shows the distribution of those effect sizes. The calculation of Cook's distances indicated that one effect size from Jiang, Lim, Wang, and Hamm (2013), with a value of r(26) ¼ À.57, exceeded Bollen and Jackman's (1985) criterion. Thus, this effect size was excluded from further analysis.…”

Section: Baseline Modelmentioning

confidence: 90%

Meta-analytic evidence for the non-modularity of pitch processing in congenital amusia

Vuvan

Nunes-Silva

Peretz

2015

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A major theme driving research in congenital amusia is related to the modularity of this musical disorder, with two possible sources of the amusic pitch perception deficit. The first possibility is that the amusic deficit is due to a broad disorder of acoustic pitch processing that has the effect of disrupting downstream musical pitch processing, and the second is that amusia is specific to a musical pitch processing module. To interrogate these hypotheses, we performed a meta-analysis on two types of effect sizes contained within 42 studies in the amusia literature: the performance gap between amusics and controls on tasks of pitch discrimination, broadly defined, and the correlation between specifically acoustic pitch perception and musical pitch perception. To augment the correlation database, we also calculated this correlation using data from 106 participants tested by our own research group. We found strong evidence for the acoustic account of amusia. The magnitude of the performance gap was moderated by the size of pitch change, but not by whether the stimuli were composed of tones or speech. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between an individual's acoustic and musical pitch perception. However, individual cases show a double dissociation between acoustic and musical processing, which suggests that although most amusic cases are probably explainable by an acoustic deficit, there is heterogeneity within the disorder. Finally, we found that tonal language fluency does not influence the performance gap between amusics and controls, and that there was no evidence that amusics fare worse with pitch direction tasks than pitch discrimination tasks. These results constitute a quantitative review of the current literature of congenital amusia, and suggest several new directions for research, including the experimental induction of amusic behaviour through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and the systematic exploration of the developmental trajectory of this disorder.

show abstract

Section: Baseline Modelmentioning

confidence: 90%

Meta-analytic evidence for the non-modularity of pitch processing in congenital amusia

Vuvan

Nunes-Silva

Peretz

2015

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Several studies note that short-term memory deficits in amusia persist even for stimuli that are above threshold (Albouy et al, 2013a, 2013b; Gosselin et al, 2009; Tillmann et al, 2009; Williamson et al, 2010). However, presenting the same stimuli for both amusics and controls means that pitch changes will be closer to amusics’ thresholds relative to controls (Jiang et al, 2013). Jiang et al note it is difficult to interpret findings from memory studies that have not controlled for pitch sensitivity because pitch sensitivity and memory are confounded.…”

Section: Experiments 2: Assessing the Role Of Memory Loadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory deficits in amusia extend beyond poor pitch perception

Whiteford

Oxenham

2017

Neuropsychologia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Congenital amusia is a music perception disorder believed to reflect a deficit in fine-grained pitch perception and/or short-term or working memory for pitch. Because most measures of pitch perception include memory and segmentation components, it has been difficult to determine the true extent of pitch processing deficits in amusia. It is also unclear whether pitch deficits persist at frequencies beyond the range of musical pitch. To address these questions, experiments were conducted with amusics and matched controls, manipulating both the stimuli and the task demands. First, we assessed pitch discrimination at low (500 Hz and 2000 Hz) and high (8000 Hz) frequencies using a three-interval forced-choice task. Amusics exhibited deficits even at the highest frequency, which lies beyond the existence region of musical pitch. Next, we assessed the extent to which frequency coding deficits persist in one- and two-interval frequency-modulation (FM) and amplitude-modulation (AM) detection tasks at 500 Hz at slow (fm = 4 Hz) and fast (fm = 20 Hz) modulation rates. Amusics still exhibited deficits in one-interval FM detection tasks that should not involve memory or segmentation. Surprisingly, amusics were also impaired on AM detection, which should not involve pitch processing. Finally, direct comparisons between the detection of continuous and discrete FM demonstrated that amusics suffer deficits both in coding and segmenting pitch information. Our results reveal auditory deficits in amusia extending beyond pitch perception that are subtle when controlling for memory and segmentation, and are likely exacerbated in more complex contexts such as musical listening.

show abstract

“…These pitch distances are frequently below the pitch change and pitch direction detection thresholds of amusic individuals (Hyde & Peretz, 2004;Jiang, Lim, Wang, & Hamm, 2013;Peretz et al, 2002). As such, it has been speculated that low-level processing difficulties in amusia result in higher-level structure processing difficulties, such as syntax and tonality processing (Cousineau, McDermott, & Peretz, 2012;Stewart, 2011).…”

Section: --------------------------------------------------------mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pitch change detection and pitch direction discrimination thresholds were also measured for each participant using a two-alternative forced choice AXB procedure as reported in Jiang et al (2013). The amusic participants showed higher pitch thresholds and performed significantly worse than control participants on the MBEA (Table 1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Impaired Explicit Processing of Musical Syntax and Tonality in a Group of Mandarin-Speaking Congenital Amusics

2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examined explicit processing of musical syntax and tonality in a group of Han Chinese Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia, and the extent to which pitch discrimination impairments were associated with syntax and tonality processing. In Experiment 1, we assessed whether congenital amusia is associated with impaired explicit processing of musical syntax. Congruity ratings were examined for syntactically regular or irregular endings in harmonic and melodic contexts. Unlike controls, amusic participants failed to explicitly distinguish regular from irregular endings in both contexts. Surprisingly, however, a concurrent manipulation of pitch distance did not affect the processing of musical syntax for amusics, and their impaired music-syntactic processing was uncorrelated with their pitch discrimination thresholds. In Experiment 2, we assessed tonality perception using a probe-tone paradigm. Recovery of the tonal hierarchy was less evident for the amusic group than for the control group, and this reduced sensitivity to tonality in amusia was also unrelated to poor pitch discrimination. These findings support the view that music structure is processed by cognitive and neural resources that operate independently of pitch discrimination, and that these resources are impaired in explicit judgments for individuals with congenital amusia.

show abstract

Difficulties with Pitch Discrimination Influences Pitch Memory Performance: Evidence from Congenital Amusia

Cited by 32 publications

References 49 publications

Meta-analytic evidence for the non-modularity of pitch processing in congenital amusia

Meta-analytic evidence for the non-modularity of pitch processing in congenital amusia

Auditory deficits in amusia extend beyond poor pitch perception

Impaired Explicit Processing of Musical Syntax and Tonality in a Group of Mandarin-Speaking Congenital Amusics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About