Reduced Sensitivity to Between-Category Information but Preserved Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Tone Language Speakers With Congenital Amusia

Previous studies have shown that for congenital amusics, long-term tone language experience cannot compensate for lexical tone processing deficits. However, it is still unknown whether such deficits are merely caused by domain-transferred deficits in lower-level acoustic processing and/or by higher-level phonological processing of linguistic pitch as well. The current P300 study links and extends previous studies by uncovering the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning lexical tone perception deficits in Mandarin-speaking amusics. The results suggest that regardless of the linguistic status of the signal, acoustic pitch processing deficits in amusics are manifested profoundly and further persist into the higher-level phonological processing that involves the neural processing of different lexical tone categories. Our findings indicate that long-term tone language experience may not compensate for the acoustic pitch processing deficit in tone language speakers with amusia but rather may extend to the neural processing of the phonological information of lexical tones during the attentive stage. However, from both the behavioral and neural evidence, it seems that the basic categorical perception (CP) pattern of native lexical tones is preserved in Mandarin-speaking amusics, indicating that they may have normal or near normal long-term categorical memory.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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   Tone Language Speakers and Musicians Share Enhanced Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities for Musical Pitch: Evidence for Bidirectionality between the Domains of Language and Music · 2013

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