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Individuals with Congenital Amusia Imitate Pitches More Accurately in Singing Than in Speaking: Implications for Music and Language Processing

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Individuals with Congenital Amusia Imitate Pitches More Accurately in Singing Than in Speaking: Implications for Music and Language Processing Individuals with congenital amusia imitate pitches more accurately in singing than in speaking: Implications for music and language processing Fang Liu, Cunmei Jiang, Peter Q. Pfordresher, James T. Mantell, Yi Xu, Yufang Yang & Lauren Stewart Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics ISSN 1943-3921 Volume 75 Number 8 Atten Percept Psychophys (2013) 75:1783-1798 DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0506-1 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Psychonomic Society, Inc.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Atten Percept Psychophys (2013) 75:1783–1798 DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0506-1 Individuals with congenital amusia imitate pitches more accurately in singing than in speaking: Implications for music and language processing Fang Liu & Cunmei Jiang & Peter Q. Pfordresher & James T. Mantell & Yi Xu & Yufang Yang & Lauren Stewart Published online: 23 July 2013 # Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2013 Abstract In this study, we investigated the impact of con- production deficits in congenital amusia, suggesting the genital amusia, a disorder of musical processing, on speech presence of shared pitch production mechanisms but distinct and song imitation in speakers of a tone language, Mandarin. requirements for pitch-matching accuracy in language and A group of 13 Mandarin-speaking individuals with congen- music processing. ital amusia and 13 matched controls were recorded while imitating a set of speech and two sets of song stimuli with Keywords Modularity of perception . Music cognition . varying pitch and rhythm patterns. The results indicated that Sound recognition . Perception and action . Speech individuals with congenital amusia were worse than controls production . Temporal processing in both speech and song imitation, in terms of both pitch matching (absolute and relative) and rhythm matching (rel- ative time and number of time errors). Like the controls, Congenital amusia is a disorder primarily of pitch perception individuals with congenital amusia achieved better absolute and production that has a profound impact on musical pro- and relative pitch matching and made fewer pitch interval cessing, but only minor effects on speech processing (Ayotte, and contour errors in song than in speech imitation. These Peretz, & Hyde, 2002; Liu, Patel, Fourcin, & Stewart, 2010; findings point toward domain-general pitch (and time) Patel, 2008; Peretz, Ayotte, Zatorre, Mehler, Ahad, Penhune, &Jutras,2002; Thompson, Marin, & Stewart, 2012). Recent research has suggested that the apparent domain specificity of F. Liu (*) congenital amusia can be explained partly by the following Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Chinese observations: First, individuals with congenital amusia only University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China demonstrate reduced performance in speech processing when e-mail: [email protected] the pitch contrasts involved are relatively small (Hutchins, Gosselin, & Peretz, 2010; Jiang, Hamm, Lim, Kirk, & Yang, C. Jiang 2010; Liu et al., 2010; Liu, Jiang, Thompson, Xu, Yang, & Music College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China Stewart, 2012; Nan, Sun, & Peretz, 2010; Patel, Wong, : Foxton, Lochy, & Peretz, 2008); second, linguistic contexts P. Q. Pfordresher J. T. Mantell and acoustic features other than pitch (e.g., duration, intensity) Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University may provide additional cues for speech communication (Liu, of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA Jiang, et al., 2012; Patel, Foxton, & Griffiths, 2005); and Y. Xu finally, the pitch-processing deficits in individuals with con- Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, genital amusia are more pronounced with discrete musical University College London, London WC1N 1PF, UK pitches than with gliding pitches in speech (Foxton, Dean, Y. Yang Gee, Peretz, & Griffiths, 2004; Liu, Xu, Patel, Francart, & Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiang, 2012). However, evidence is missing with regard to Beijing 100864, China how the different functions of language and music may impact the domain specificity of congenital amusia. Pitch patterns in L. Stewart Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, speech do not need to match a specified standard, but instead London SE14 6NW, UK merely need to convey contrastive functional information (Xu Author's personal copy 1784 Atten Percept Psychophys (2013) 75:1783–1798 2005). By contrast, musical pitch must conform to specific Harwood, 1986; Peretz & Hyde, 2003), we included two sets conventions that apply to individual pitches as well as pitch of song stimuli, one with pitch and rhythm patterns similar to patterns. In other words, the “form” taken by pitch patterns those in speech (language-song hereafter), and the other acts as a means of communication in speech, but is the closely resembling Western music (music-song hereafter). intended end product for music (Patel, 2008). Understanding We predicted that individuals with congenital amusia would how musical versus linguistic pitch processing in congenital perform worse than controls on both speech and song imitation amusia is affected by the nature of music and language is and that both groups would perform better on song imitation useful for formulating a model of pitch processing in music than speech imitation, due to the greater demand on pitch and language that takes into account how impairments com- precision imposed by music than speech (Patel, 2008, 2011, promise auditory-processing skills in either domain. 2012b) and because of the fact that when imitating speech Considering four theoretical perspectives, in the present study materials, individuals tend to imitate the functional goal (e.g., we examined the characteristics of pitch and rhythm process- statement/question in English) rather than the form of the ing in speech versus song imitation in individuals with con- utterances (Liu et al., 2010; Over & Gattis, 2010)unless genital amusia who speak a tone language, Mandarin. instructed to focus on pitch (Mantell & Pfordresher, 2013). The relationship between music and language Pitch/interval/contour processing in music and speech Much recent research has pointed to shared mechanisms be- Absolute pitch, interval (pitch distance between notes), and tween music and speech processing for individuals of different contour (pitch direction, up vs. down, between notes) play language and musical backgrounds (Bidelman, Gandour, & different roles in long-/short-term memory of melodies Krishnan, 2011; Hutchins, Gosselin, & Peretz, 2010;Jiang (Dowling & Bartlett, 1981; Dowling & Fujitani, 1971; et al. 2010, 2012; Liu, Jiang, et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2010; Dowling & Harwood, 1986). Previous findings suggest that Liu, Xu, et al., 2012; Mantell & Pfordresher, 2013; Nan et al., individuals with congenital amusia tended to produce pitches 2010; Patel, 2008, 2011, 2012a, 2012b; Pfordresher & Brown, lower than the targets when imitating single pitches (Hutchins, 2009; Tillmann, Burnham, Nguyen, Grimault, Gosselin & Zarate,Zatorre,&Peretz,2010),andtheyalsoshowedpitch Peretz 2011a; Tillmann, Rusconi, Traube, Butterworth, interval and contour errors in singing and pitch matching tasks Umiltà & Peretz 2011b). However, the case study of a (Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, 2009; Loui, Guenther, Mathys, Polish-speaking poor-pitch singer (without pitch perceptual & Schlaug, 2008;Wise,2009). Although these individuals problems) in Dalla Bella, Berkowska, and Sowinski (2011) showed great difficulty recognizing, memorizing, and producing demonstrated domain-specific performance on pitch imitation melodies without lyrics (Ayotte et al., 2002; Dalla Bella et al., in speech (intact) versus song (impaired). Although studies on 2009), it remains unclear which aspects of melodic processing a larger sample of English-speaking poor-pitch singers suggest underlie such difficulty: pitch, interval, and/or contour process- that this dissociation may not generalize to the broader popu- ing? The present study examined pitch/interval/contour process- lation of poor-pitch singers (Mantell & Pfordresher, 2013), it is ing in speech versus song imitation among Mandarin-speaking unclear whether individuals with congenital amusia (with pitch individuals with congenital amusia through detailed acoustic perceptual problems) would demonstrate music-specific pitch analyses. Given that imitation facilitates amusic singing production deficits due to the apparent domain specificity of (Tremblay-Champoux, Dalla Bella, Phillips-Silver, Lebrun, & congenital amusia (severely impaired musical perception; rel- Peretz, 2010) and automatic pitch processing is involved during atively spared speech perception) or domain-general pitch imitation (Hutchins & Peretz, 2012a;Liuetal.,2010;Louietal., production deficits are associated with this disorder. 2008), we expected these individuals
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