The perception of lexical tone in whispered speech by Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

Abstract

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopment disorder of musical pitch processing, which also affects lexical tone perception in tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese. In this study we aimed to investigate how congenital amusia affects lexical tone recognition without pitch information. Nineteen Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics and 19 matched controls were tested on lexical tone identification in both phonated and whispered speech. The results revealed that the performance of congenital amusics was inferior to that of controls in lexical tone identification in both phonated and whispered speech, but the differences between the two groups were smaller in whispered speech. Moreover, the identification of Tone 3 and Tone 4 was easier than that of Tone 2 and Tone 1 in whispered tone for both groups. The results indicate that the primary disorder of amusia lies in pitch processing but the deficits of amusia also appear to extend beyond pitch processing.