title: Pitch discrimination associated with phonological awareness: Evidence from congenital amusia.
abstract: Research suggests that musical skills are associated with phonological abilities. To further investigate this association, we examined whether phonological impairments are evident in individuals with poor music abilities. Twenty individuals with congenital amusia and 20 matched controls were assessed on a pure-tone pitch discrimination task, a rhythm discrimination task, and four phonological tests. Amusic participants showed deficits in discriminating pitch and discriminating rhythmic patterns that involve a regular beat. At a group level, these individuals performed similarly to controls on all phonological tests. However, eight amusics with severe pitch impairment, as identified by the pitch discrimination task, exhibited significantly worse performance than all other participants in phonological awareness. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that pitch discrimination thresholds predicted phonological awareness beyond that predicted by phonological short-term memory and rhythm discrimination. In contrast, our rhythm discrimination task did not predict phonological awareness beyond that predicted by pitch discrimination thresholds. These findings suggest that accurate pitch discrimination is critical for phonological processing. We propose that deficits in early-stage pitch discrimination may be associated with impaired phonological awareness and we discuss the shared role of pitch discrimination for processing music and speech.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Yanan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xuejing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Hao Tam
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: William Forde
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Thompson
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D001184:Articulation Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests; D055815:Young Adult