Auditory imagery in congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder affecting various aspects of music and speech processing. Although perception and auditory imagery in the general population may share mechanisms, it is not known whether previously documented perceptual impairments in amusia are coupled with difficulties in imaging auditory objects. We employed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS) to assess participants’ self-perceived voluntary imagery and a short earworm questionnaire to gauge their subjective experience of involuntary musical imagery. A total of 32 participants with amusia and 34 matched controls, recruited based on their performance on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), filled out the questionnaires in their own time. The earworm scores of amusic participants were not statistically significantly different from those of controls. By contrast, their scores on vividness and control of auditory imagery were significantly lower relative to controls. Overall, results suggest that the presence of amusia may not have an adverse effect on generating involuntary musical imagery—at the level of self-report—but still significantly reduces the individual’s self-rated voluntary imagery of musical, vocal, and environmental sounds. We discuss the findings in the light of previous research on explicit musical judgments and implicit engagement with music, while also touching on some statistical power considerations

Exploring the role of singing, semantics, and amusia screening in speech-in-noise perception in musicians and non-musicians

Sentence repetition has been the focus of extensive psycholinguistic research. The notion that music training can bolster speech perception in adverse auditory conditions has been met with mixed results. In this work, we sought to gauge the effect of babble noise on immediate repetition of spoken and sung phrases of varying semantic content (expository, narrative, and anomalous), initially in 100 English-speaking monolinguals with and without music training. The two cohorts also completed some non-musical cognitive tests and the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). When disregarding MBEA results, musicians were found to significantly outperform non-musicians in terms of overall repetition accuracy. Sung targets were recalled significantly better than spoken ones across groups in the presence of babble noise. Sung expository targets were recalled better than spoken expository ones, and semantically anomalous content was recalled more poorly in noise. Rerunning the analysis after eliminating thirteen participants who were diagnosed with amusia showed no significant group differences. This suggests that the notion of enhanced speech perception – in noise or otherwise – in musicians needs to be evaluated with caution. Musicianship aside, this study showed for the first time that sung targets presented in babble noise seem to be recalled better than spoken ones. We discuss the present design and the methodological approach of screening for amusia as factors which may partially account for some of the mixed results in the field

Auditory imagery in congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder affecting various aspects of music and speech processing. Although perception and auditory imagery in the general population may share mechanisms, it is not known whether previously documented perceptual impairments in amusia are coupled with difficulties in imaging auditory objects. We employed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS) to assess participants’ self-perceived voluntary imagery and a short earworm questionnaire to gauge their subjective experience of involuntary musical imagery. Thirty-two participants with amusia and 34 matched controls, recruited based on their performance on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), filled out the questionnaires in their own time. The earworm scores of amusic participants were not statistically significantly different from those of controls. By contrast, their scores on vividness and control of auditory imagery were significantly lower relative to controls. Overall, results suggest that the presence of amusia may not have an adverse effect on generating involuntary musical imagery – at the level of self-report – but still significantly reduces the individual’s self-rated voluntary imagery of musical, vocal, and environmental sounds. We discuss the findings in the light of previous research on explicit musical judgements and implicit engagement with music, while also touching on some statistical power considerations

Phrase-final words in Greek storytelling speech: a study on the effect of a culturally-specific prosodic feature on short-term memory

Prosodic patterns of speech appear to make a critical contribution to memoryrelated processing. We considered the case of a previously unexplored prosodic feature of Greek storytelling and its effect on free recall in thirty typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, using short ecologically valid auditory stimuli. The combination of a falling pitch contour and, more notably, extensive final-syllable vowel lengthening, which gives rise to the prosodic feature in question, led to statistically significantly higher performance in comparison to neutral phrase-final prosody. Number of syllables in target words did not reveal substantial difference in performance. The current study presents a previously undocumented culturally-specific prosodic pattern and its effect on short-term memory

Song imitation in congenital amusia: performance partially facilitated by melody familiarity but not by lyrics

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder of pitch perception that may also compromise pitch production. Despite amusics’ long documented difficulties with pitch, previous evidence suggests that familiar music may have an implicit facilitative effect on their performance. It remains, however, unknown whether vocal imitation of song in amusia is influenced by melody familiarity and the presence of lyrics. To address this issue, thirteen Mandarin-speaking amusics and 13 matched controls imitated novel song segments with lyrics and on the syllable /la/. Eleven out of these participants in each group also imitated segments of a familiar song. Subsequent acoustic analysis was conducted to measure pitch and timing matching accuracy based on eight acoustic measures. While amusics showed worse imitation performance than controls across seven out of the eight pitch and timing measures, melody familiarity was found to have a favourable effect on their performance on three pitch-related acoustic measures. The presence of lyrics did not affect either group’s performance substantially. Correlations were observed between amusics’ performance on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia and imitation of the novel song. We discuss implications in terms of music familiarity, memory demands, the relevance of lexical information and the link between perception and production

MOSAICS FALL APART IN DIFFERENT WAYS: EXPLORING VARIATION IN COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN PATTERNS IN THREE APHASIC PATIENTS

In addition to linguistic impairments, the cognitive underpinnings of pragmatic abilities in aphasic individuals can be severely compromised. Impairments include incoherent discourse and other speech organization deficits. At the same time, preserved pragmatic patterns reveal communicative abilities that can go unnoticed if only standardized screening tests are used. Conversational Partners also appear to play a role in mitigating compromised linguistic ability. Although some tools assessing the communicative abilities of neurological patients have been recently employed, the question of whether pragmatic performance declines in consistent patterns remains poorly understood. We applied the Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol – Revised (PREP-R) to video-recorded interviews of Greek individuals with aphasia, presented here as separate case studies. The tool offers a detailed account of pragmatic ability across 29 distinct categories and consists of three distinct subcomponents, namely enunciative pragmatics, textual pragmatics, and interactional pragmatics. Our results showed considerable variation in the performance of each patient and across our three aphasic patients. We also found that the role of the Key Conversational Partner was critical to effective communication, in line with previous research. As the communication repertoire of each of our participants was found to be highly idiosyncratic, we propose that further research should shift away from the mere evaluation of isolated verbal abilities

When lack of sleep takes its toll on communication: an assessment of pragmatic abilities in two children following sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation affects numerous cognitive processes. Children populations have not been studied thoroughly, with regard to the effect of sleep deprivation on communication abilities. In this study, we investigate the pragmatic competence following acute sleep deprivation. Two eleven-year-old boys were evaluated on their pragmatic ability before and following sleep deprivation. The conversations were video-recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the CHAT conventions. The Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol Revised (PREP-R) was administered for the investigation of pragmatic ability. Both children demonstrated a significantly lower performance following acute sleep deprivation. Their specific pragmatic ability and grammatically-based pragmatic ability were impaired. The subjects were unable to use lexical, morphological and syntactic cohesion, and encountered difficulties in the interaction and the managing of pauses. Acute sleep deprivation affects pragmatic competence, mainly due to difficulties in alertness, attention, working memory, and executive dysfunction in general. Variability in the pragmatic ability of the two subjects implies that more studies, focused on the cognitive deficits after sleep deprivation can cast more light on the evaluation of pragmatic ability