Revisiting visuo-spatial processing in individuals with congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is a lifelong developmental disorder of pitch, not only specific to music. Several studies have explored whether amusia impacts spatial processing, as pitch perception is associated with spatial representations in nature. However, to date, the results were still inconclusive, with some researchers claiming amusics have general spatial processing deficits while others not. To better understand this question, the present study examined some basic capabilities of spatial processing via Corsi Blocks task and the mental rotation task. Additionally, it has been documented that the processing of spatial representations normally shares cognitive mechanisms (e.g., the perception of magnitude precision) with melody memory, a pitch short-memory (span) task was also conducted. Eighteen amusics and 18 controls participated in the experiments. The results showed that in Corsi Block task, amusics’ performances were comparable to the musically intact controls, suggesting that amusics possess intact visual short-term memory. However, poorer performance on the mental rotation task indicates that amusics have poor spatial awareness. Furthermore, the results also showed a strong association between pitch memory capacity and mental rotation accuracy, confirming that they shared certain underlying cognitive mechanisms like the perception of magnitude precision, probably contributing to their deficits in pitch memory and spatial processing.