AIRS 1st Annual Meeting: 2009

Title: Pitch Matching in Amusia
Authors: Sean Hutchins (University of Montreal, Canada)

Abstract

One interesting place to study the relationship between pitch perception is vocal pitch
matching. This is an important basic skill for any type of singing. We assessed pitch matching
abilities in congenital amusics to help to understand the relationship between perception and
production in music. Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder characterized by the
inability to consciously perceive pitch differences. Amusics and controls attempted to match
pitches vocally under normal, guided, and masked feedback conditions. We analyzed the
fundamental frequency of their vocal productions, and found that amusics were significantly
less accurate in matching a target pitch than controls. However, five of the six amusics showed
a significant correlation between their produced pitches and the target pitch. Feedback
condition had no effect on pitch matching accuracy. These results confirm that amusics are
indeed worse at vocal pitch matching than controls, but shows evidence that some of them do
adjust their productions in response to changing target in a systematic way.