Reduced sensitivity to emotional prosody in congenital amusia rekindles the musical protolanguage hypothesis

Abstract

A number of evolutionary theories assume that music and language have a common origin as an emotional protolanguage that remains evident in overlapping functions and shared neural circuitry. The most basic prediction of this hypothesis is that sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody derives from the capacity to process music. We examined sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody in a sample of individuals with congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in processing acoustic and structural attributes of music. Twelve individuals with congenital amusia and 12 matched control participants judged the emotional expressions of 96 spoken phrases. Phrases were semantically neutral but prosodic cues (tone of voice) communicated each of six emotional states: happy, tender, afraid, irritated, sad, and no emotion. Congenitally amusic individuals were significantly worse than matched controls at decoding emotional prosody, with decoding rates for some emotions up to 20% lower than that of matched controls. They also reported difficulty understanding emotional prosody in their daily lives, suggesting some awareness of this deficit. The findings support speculations that music and language share mechanisms that trigger emotional responses to acoustic attributes, as predicted by theories that propose a common evolutionary link between these domains.

Sensitivity to musical emotions in congenital amusia

“…However, recent findings question the domain specificity of the present findings. First, a mild deficit in identifying happiness and sadness from speech prosody has been observed in congenital amusia (Thompson, Marin, & Stewart, 2012). Second, the spectra of M A N U S C R I P T…”

Phonological processing in Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia

“…Nevertheless, difficulties with music are not the only characteristics of individuals with amusia (amusics). Studies have shown that the perception and production of pitch changes in the linguistic domain may likewise be problematic for amusics, although to a less pronounced extent (e.g., Patel et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2010;Tillmann et al, 2011a;Liu et al, 2012;Thompson et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013). However, the precise nature of amusia, or rather, of the deficits that underlie amusia, is not well understood.…”

Congenital amusia: A cognitive disorder limited to resolved harmonics and with no peripheral basis

“…, 2012). The condition was originally described as a strictly musical deficit, but this specificity has been challenged by recent evidence for deficits in prosody perception in both non-tonal (Patel et al ., 1998; Patel et al ., 2008; Thompson et al ., 2012) and tonal (Jiang et al, 2010; Jiang et al ., 2012a) languages, as well as categorical perception of language tones in Mandarin speakers (Jiang et al ., 2010; 2012b). The diagnostic tool most widely used for congenital amusia is the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of amusia (MBEA, Peretz et al ., 2003), which consists of six tests that assess musical pitch and rhythm discrimination, meter perception and memory.…”