title: Just-noticeable difference of tone pitch contour change for Mandarin congenital amusics.
abstract: Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder that may affect the processing of both music pitch and lexical tone. In the present study, the just-noticeable differences (JNDs) of tone pitch contour change were examined for three groups of Mandarin-native listeners: amusics with (tone agnosics) and without lexical tone difficulties (pure amusics), and matched controls. Tone agnosics showed significantly larger JNDs than normal controls, while pure amusics performed comparably with the controls. These results suggest that only those amusics with behavioral lexical tone deficits might be psychophysically impaired in pitch contour discrimination.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China huangwanting1210@gmail.com; nany@bnu.edu.cn; dongqi@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Wan-Ting
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China huangwanting1210@gmail.com; nany@bnu.edu.cn; dongqi@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China huangwanting1210@gmail.com; nany@bnu.edu.cn; dongqi@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1100, Austin, Texas 78712, USA changliu@utexas.edu.
authors.forename: Chang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*