Short- and long-term memory for pitch and non-pitch contours in congenital amusia

Abstract

Congenital amusia is a disorder characterized by deficits in music and pitch perception, but the degree to which the deficit is specific to pitch remains unclear. Amusia often results in difficulties discriminating and remembering melodies and melodic contours. Non-amusic listeners can perceive contours in dimensions other than pitch, such as loudness and brightness, but it is unclear whether amusic pitch contour deficits also extend to these other auditory dimensions. This question was addressed by testing the identification of ten familiar French melodies and the discrimination of changes in the contour of novel four-note melodies. Melodic contours were defined by pitch, brightness, or loudness. Amusic participants were impaired relative to matched controls in all dimensions, but showed some ability to extract contours in all three dimensions. In the novel contour discrimination task, amusic participants exhibited less impairment for loudness-based melodies than for pitch- or brightness-based melodies, ...