Song imitation in congenital amusia: Performance partially facilitated by melody familiarity but not by phonetic content

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariadne Loutrari ◽  
Cunmei Jiang ◽  
Fang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Matching Accuracy ◽  
Pitch Interval ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Vocal Imitation ◽  
Pitch Deviation

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder of pitch perception that may also compromise pitch production. We explored whether vocal imitation of song in amusia is influenced by melody familiarity and phonetic content. Thirteen Mandarin-speaking amusics and 13 matched controls imitated novel song segments with lyrics and on the syllable /la/ while their output was recorded. Eleven out of these participants in each group also imitated segments of a familiar song. Subsequent acoustic analysis was conducted to measure pitch and timing matching accuracy. While amusics’ performance was facilitated by melody familiarity in terms of pitch interval deviation, signed interval deviation and number of contour errors, they showed compromised performance compared to controls in absolute pitch deviation, number of pitch interval errors, duration difference, interonset interval difference, and number of time errors in both familiar and novel song conditions. The presence of lyrics did not affect either group’s performance substantially. While a stronger relationship between music perception and novel melody imitation was observed in amusics as opposed to familiar melody imitation, controls showed the opposite pattern. We discuss the implications of the study in terms of music familiarity, memory demands, the relevance of lexical information and the link between perception and production.

scholarly journals Perceiving Music Through the Lens of Synaesthesia and Absolute Pitch

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110344
Author(s):  
Solange Glasser
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Potential Relationship ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Music Literature ◽  
Behavioural Evidence

Synaesthesia and absolute pitch (AP) are two rare conditions that occur more frequently within populations of artistic professionals. Current thinking surrounding synaesthesia and AP and their relationship to music perception form the focus of this article. Given that synaesthesia has rarely been discussed in the music literature, the article surveys and consolidates general neurobiological, psychological, and behavioural evidence to summarise what is currently known on this topic, in order to link this back to the conditions that most relate to music. In contrast, research on AP is now well established in the music literature, but the important gap of linking AP to other conditions such as synaesthesia has yet to be fully explored. This article investigates the potential relationship between synaesthesia and AP for musicians who possess both conditions by systematically comparing the definitions, classifications, prevalence, diagnoses, and impacts on music perception of synaesthesia and AP and provides insights into the varying states of the literature and knowledge of both conditions. In so doing, this article aims to facilitate a greater understanding of music and auditory forms of synaesthesia and their interaction with AP and encourage increased research effort on this important topic.

On the Nature of Early Music Training and Absolute Pitch: A Reply to Brown, Sachs, Cammuso, and Folstein

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL J. LEVITIN ◽  
ROBERT J. ZATORRE
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Statistical Nature ◽  
Early Music ◽  
Music Training

We discuss two issues raised in the article about the acquisition of absolute pitch published in Music Perception by W. A. Brown, H. Sachs, K. Cammuso, and S. E. Folstein (2002) with which we disagree. First, we describe that aspect of musical training we feel is relevant for the acquisition of absolute pitch. Second, we point out a disagreement about the statistical nature of developmental stages and critical periods. We describe an alternative view of absolute pitch acquisition.

The Alpha and Omega of Musical Pitch Processing—Absolute Pitch and Congenital Amusia

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-150
Author(s):  
William J Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Performing Arts Medicine ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Musical Pitch ◽  
Process Music

The neurobiology of music has been a prolific source of publications in performing arts medicine over the past 15 years. A common research topic in music neurobiology is how humans perceive and process music. This review concentrates on two opposite aspects of pitch processing—heightened ability (absolute pitch) and absent ability (congenital amusia). From the bibliography of performing arts medicine found on the website of the Performing Arts Medicine Association, 165 citations were identified (as of February 2009) that deal with these topics, 149 on absolute pitch and 70 on congenital amusia, and form the basis of this review.

Testing the Hyperarticulation and Prosodic Hypotheses of Child-Directed Speech: Insights From the Perceptual and Acoustic Characteristics of Child-Directed Cantonese Tones

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 1907-1925
Author(s):  
Puisan Wong ◽  
Kelly Wing Sum Ng
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Perceptual Accuracy ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Error Patterns ◽  
Lowering Effect ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Low Pass ◽  
Pitch Level

Purpose The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Method Sixty-two mother–child dyads participated in the study. The mothers verbally labeled 30 pictures in monosyllabic isolated words and in the final position of a carrier sentence to the experimenter and their 1- to 5-year-old children. The 8,634 adult- and child-directed productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and presented to 5 judges for tone identification. Acoustic analysis was performed on the productions. Results Acoustically, child-directed tones were produced with an elevated pitch, and the pitch level decreased as the child's age increased. Acoustic contrasts between phonetically similar and more confusing tones were not enhanced in child-directed speech, and unexpectedly, child-directed tones were identified with a lower accuracy than adult-directed tones. The perceptual errors of child-directed tones mirrored the errors found in identifying tones excised from sentence-final position, which had a pitch-lowering effect on the tones. The lower perceptual accuracy, the lack of enhanced acoustic contrasts in confusing tone pairs, and the similarities in the error patterns in identifying tones in child-directed speech and tones in utterance-final position suggest that the acoustic modifications in child-directed tones are prosodic effects serving pragmatic purposes. Conclusion The findings reject the hyperarticulation hypothesis and support the prosodic hypothesis of child-directed speech.

Toward a Comparative Psychology of Music Perception

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart H. Hulse ◽  
Suzanne C. Page
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Comparative Psychology ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
European Starling ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
New Information ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Psychology Of Music ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Musicians and ethnomusicologists have long been interested in the idea of musical universals, the proposition that features of musical structure are common to the music of all human cultures. Recently, the development of new techniques and new theory makes it possible to ask whether the perceptual principles underlying music span not just human cultures but also other nonhuman species. A series of experiments addressing this issue from a comparative perspective show that a songbird, the European starling, can perceive pitch relations, a form of musical universal. However, the species transposes pitch relations across large shifts in tone height with difficulty. Instead, songbirds show a preference for learning pitch patterns on the basis of the absolute pitch of component tones. These results suggest further comparative studies of music perception may be especially worthwhile, not just for gathering new information about animals, but also for highlighting the principles that make human music perception unique.

USES AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN CONGENITAL AMUSIA

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAIRE MCDONALD ◽  
LAUREN STEWART
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Appreciation ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Control Range ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Normal Potential

THE GOAL OF THIS STUDY WAS TO ASCERTAIN whether deficits in music perception impact upon music appreciation. Likert ratings were gathered from congenital amusics and matched controls concerning the degree to which individuals incorporate music in their everyday lives, are able to achieve certain psychological states through music, and feel positively about music imposed upon them. Those with amusia reported incorporating music into everyday activities to a lesser degree than controls. They also reported experiencing fewer changes in psychological states when listening to music and felt more negatively about imposed music compared to controls. However, the scores of some amusic individuals fell within the control range on these questionnaires, providing some evidence for a developmental dissociation between music perception (impaired) and music appreciation (normal). Potential reasons for this dissociation are discussed.

scholarly journals An Automatic Singing Evaluation System

2011 ◽  
Vol 128-129 ◽  
pp. 504-509
Author(s):  
Yu Xiang Liu ◽  
Ze Yu Jin ◽  
Jia Jia ◽  
Lian Hong Cai
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation System ◽  
Subjective Evaluation ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Pitch Interval ◽  
Relative Pitch ◽  
Evaluation Approach ◽  
Great Consistency ◽  
Noticeable Improvement ◽  
Pitch Deviation

In this paper, a singing evaluation approach based on pitch and rhythm accuracy is proposed. A comparative study was first carried out between speech and singing voice, which demonstrated the characteristic of consonant and vowel in singing voice. A phoneme boundary detector was adopted to perform note segmentation in a high time resolution by using characteristics of consonant and vowel. As for singing skill evaluation, relative pitch interval between reference score and actual sung pitch was adopted to estimate pitch deviation while difference between absolute position and expected position of beats served as rhythm consistency measure. Experiments on a solfege corpus demonstrated a noticeable improvement in the performance of onset detection. A detailed subjective evaluation showed great consistency between the proposed evaluation approach and experts’ judgment.

scholarly journals Emotional prosody in congenital amusia: impaired and spared processes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Pralus ◽  
L. Fornoni ◽  
R. Bouet ◽  
M. Gomot ◽  
A. Bhatara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Neurodevelopmental Disorder ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
List Type ◽  
Emotional Prosody ◽  
Implicit Processing ◽  
Implicit Processes ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Explicit Recognition

AbstractCongenital amusia is a lifelong deficit of music processing, in particular of pitch processing. Most research investigating this neurodevelopmental disorder has focused on music perception, but pitch also has a critical role for intentional and emotional prosody in speech. Two previous studies investigating amusics’ emotional prosody recognition have shown either some deficit or no deficit (compared to controls). However, these previous studies have used only long sentence stimuli, which allow for limited control over acoustic content. Here, we tested amusic individuals for emotional prosody perception in sentences and vowels. For each type of material, participants performed an emotion categorization task, followed by intensity ratings of the recognized emotion. Compared to controls, amusic individuals had similar recognition of emotion in sentences, but poorer performance in vowels, especially when distinguishing sad and neutral stimuli. These lower performances in amusics were linked with difficulties in processing pitch and spectro-temporal parameters of the vowel stimuli. For emotion intensity, neither sentence nor vowel ratings differed between participant groups, suggesting preserved implicit processing of emotional prosody in amusia. These findings can be integrated into previous data showing preserved implicit processing of pitch and emotion in amusia alongside deficits in explicit recognition tasks. They are thus further supporting the hypothesis of impaired conscious analysis of pitch and timbre in this neurodevelopmental disorder.HighlightsAmusics showed preserved emotional prosody recognition in sentencesAmusics showed a deficit for emotional prosody recognition in short voice samplesPreserved intensity ratings of emotions in amusia suggest spared implicit processes

scholarly journals Increased Resting-State Interhemispheric Functional Connectivity of Posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus and Posterior Cingulate Cortex in Congenital Amusia

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhishuai Jin ◽  
Sizhu Huyang ◽  
Lichen Jiang ◽  
Yajun Yan ◽  
Ming Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Posterior Cingulate ◽  
Congenital Amusia

Interhemispheric connectivity of the two cerebral hemispheres is crucial for a broad repertoire of cognitive functions including music and language. Congenital amusia has been reported as a neurodevelopment disorder characterized by impaired music perception and production. However, little is known about the characteristics of the interhemispheric functional connectivity (FC) in amusia. In the present study, we used a newly developed voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) method to investigate the interhemispheric FC of the whole brain in amusia at resting-state. Thirty amusics and 29 matched participants underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. An automated VMHC approach was used to analyze the fMRI data. Compared to the control group, amusics showed increased VMHC within the posterior part of the default mode network (DMN) mainly in the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Correlation analyses revealed negative correlations between the VMHC value in pSTG/PCC and the music perception ability among amusics. Further ROC analyses showed that the VMHC value of pSTG/PCC showed a good sensibility/specificity to differentiate the amusics from the controls. These findings provide a new perspective for understanding the neural basis of congenital amusia and imply the immature state of DMN may be a credible neural marker of amusia.

scholarly journals Effects of vocal training in a musicophile with congenital amusia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wilbiks ◽  
Dominique T Vuvan ◽  
Pier-Yves Girard ◽  
Isabelle Peretz ◽  
Frank Russo
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Pitch Perception ◽  
Musical Rhythm ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Vocal Training ◽  
Diffusion Weighted Images ◽  
Irreversible Reduction ◽  
Rhythm And Meter ◽  
Brain Data

Congenital amusia is a condition in which an individual suffers from a deficit of musical pitch perception and production. Individuals suffering from congenital amusia generally tend to abstain from musical activities. Here, we present the unique case of Tim Falconer, a self-described musicophile who also suffers from congenital amusia. We describe and assess Tim’s attempts to train himself out of amusia through a self-imposed 18-month program of formal vocal training and practice. We tested Tim with respect to music perception and vocal production across seven sessions including pre- and post-training assessments. We also obtained diffusion-weighted images of his brain to assess connectivity between auditory and motor planning areas via the arcuate fasciculus (AF). Tim’s behavioral and brain data were compared to that of normal and amusic controls. While Tim showed temporary gains in his singing ability, he did not reach normal levels, and these gains faded when he was not engaged in regular lessons and practice. Tim did show some sustained gains with respect to the perception of musical rhythm and meter. We propose that Tim’s lack of improvement in pitch perception and production tasks is due to long-standing and likely irreversible reduction in connectivity along the AF fiber tract.

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