Perception of musical timbre in congenital amusia: categorization, discrimination and short-term memory.
Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized primarily by difficulties in the pitch domain. The aim of the present study was to investigate the perception of musical timbre in a group of individuals with congenital amusia by probing discrimination and short-term memory for real-world timbral stimuli as well as examining the ability of these individuals to sort instrumental tones according to their timbral similarity. Thirteen amusic individuals were matched with thirteen non-amusic controls on a range of background variables. The discrimination task included stimuli of two different durations and pairings of instrumental tones that reflected varying distances in a perceptual timbre space. Performance in the discrimination task was at ceiling for both groups. In contrast, amusic individuals scored lower than controls on the short-term timbral memory task. Amusic individuals also performed worse than controls on the sorting task, suggesting differences in the higher-order representation of musical timbre. These findings add to the emerging picture of amusia as a disorder that has consequences for the perception and memory of musical timbre, as well as pitch.
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom. manuela.marin@univie.ac.at
Manuela M
MM
Marin
Bruno
B
Gingras
Lauren
L
Stewart
D000328:Adult; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*