Pitch discrimination associated with phonological awareness: Evidence from congenital amusia.
Sci Rep
; 7: 44285, 2017 03 13.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28287166
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.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Discriminação da Altura Tonal
/
Percepção da Altura Sonora
/
Transtornos da Percepção Auditiva
/
Conscientização
/
Música
Tipo de estudo:
Diagnostic_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Ano de publicação:
2017
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Austrália