Abstract
Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic deficit that impacts pitch processing in music. Studies have shown that the deficit in amusia not only affects pitch processing in music, but also transfers to the language domain, influencing pitch processing in speech, such as lexical tone and intonation perception. Previous studies have shown that amusics are impaired in lexical tone perception in both native and non-native language speakers. However, it is still unclear whether individuals with amusia are more impaired in the perception of native tones, which have long-term phonological representations, or non-native tones, which depends more on auditory/phonetic pitch processing. To fill this gap, this study examined the discrimination of pairs of native Cantonese tones and non-native Thai tones by 14 Cantonese speakers with amusia and 14 normal controls. Results showed that Cantonese-speaking amusics were more impaired in the discrimination of non-native Thai tones than native Cantonese tones, suggesting a profound impairment in auditory/phonetic pitch processing in amusia. This finding also suggested that early exposure to a tonal language might not compensate for the impairment of lexical tone processing in a non-native language.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018 |
Pages | 562-566 |
Number of pages | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 13 Jun 2018 |
Event | 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2018 - Poznan, Poland Duration: 13 Jun 2018 → 16 Jun 2018 https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/speechprosody_2018/index.html |
Conference
Conference | 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2018 |
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Country/Territory | Poland |
City | Poznan |
Period | 13/06/18 → 16/06/18 |
Internet address |
User-Defined Keywords
- congenital amusia
- lexical tone
- Cantonese
- Thai
- tone discrimination