Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
T
FANG LIU HE ABILITY TO PERCEIVE MUSIC SEEMS
University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom effortless and starts from infancy for the major-
ity of the general population (Trehub, 2010).
CUNMEI JIANG However, this ability can be beyond the reach of those
Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China with congenital amusia (amusia hereafter), a neurodeve-
lopmental disorder of musical perception and produc-
TOM FRANCART tion (Peretz, 2013). Often viewed as a lifelong disorder,
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium individuals with amusia (amusics hereafter) demonstrate
severe impairments in basic aspects of musical proces-
A L I C E H. D. C H A N sing, such as distinguishing one tune from another and
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore singing in tune, despite having normal hearing and intel-
ligence and without any neurological or psychiatric dis-
P A T R I C K C. M. W O N G orders (Ayotte, Peretz, & Hyde, 2002). With a genetic
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China origin (Drayna, Manichaikul, de Lange, Snieder, & Spec-
tor, 2001; Peretz, Cummings, & Dub, 2007), this disor-
CONGENITAL AMUSIA IS A LIFELONG DISORDER OF der affects around 1.5-5% of the general population for
musical processing for which no effective treatments speakers of both tone and non-tonal languages (Kalmus
have been found. The present study aimed to treat amu- & Fry, 1980; Nan, Sun, & Peretz, 2010; Peretz, 2013;
sics impairments in pitch direction identification Wong et al., 2012; but see Henry & McAuley, 2010,
through auditory training. Prior to training, twenty 2013, for criticisms). The core deficit of amusia lies in
Chinese-speaking amusics and 20 matched controls were musical pitch processing, although around half of amu-
tested on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia sics also demonstrate rhythm deficits (Foxton, Nandy, &
(MBEA) and two psychophysical pitch threshold tasks Griffiths, 2006; Peretz, Champod, & Hyde, 2003).
for identification of pitch direction in speech and music. A range of perceptual skills are required for normal
Subsequently, ten of the twenty amusics undertook 10 melodic processing, including acoustic analysis of pitch,
sessions of adaptive-tracking pitch direction training, extraction of interval and contour, tonal encoding of
while the remaining 10 received no training. Post train- pitch, and short-term memory for pitch (Krumhansl &
ing, all amusics were retested on the pitch threshold tasks Keil, 1982; Peretz & Coltheart, 2003; Stewart, 2011).
and on the three pitch-based MBEA subtests. Trained Amusics have shown impairments in all these aspects.
amusics demonstrated significantly improved thresholds First, amusics demonstrate difficulty in detecting pitch
for pitch direction identification in both speech and changes less than two semitones in tone sequences
music, to the level of non-amusic control participants, (Hyde & Peretz, 2004; Jiang, Hamm, Lim, Kirk, & Yang,
although no significant difference was observed between 2011; Peretz et al., 2002), and show higher thresholds
trained and untrained amusics in the MBEA subtests. This for pitch change detection than normal controls in
provides the first clear positive evidence for improvement psychophysical tasks (Foxton, Dean, Gee, Peretz, &
in pitch direction processing through auditory training in Griffiths, 2004; Jiang, Lim, Wang, & Hamm, 2013; Liu,
amusia. Further training studies are required to target Patel, Fourcin, & Stewart, 2010). Second, amusics have
different deficit areas in congenital amusia, so as to reveal reduced sensitivity to the direction of pitch movement
which aspects of improvement will be most beneficial to (up versus down) in both music and speech, and show
the normal functioning of musical processing. elevated psychophysical thresholds for pitch direction
Received: July 7, 2015, accepted June 20, 2016. discrimination and identification (Foxton, Dean, et al.,
2004; Jiang, Hamm, Lim, Kirk, & Yang, 2010; Jiang
Key words: congenital amusia, auditory training, pitch et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2010; Liu, Xu, Patel, Francart, &
threshold, pitch direction, musical processing Jiang, 2012; Loui, Guenther, Mathys, & Schlaug, 2008).
Music Perception, V OL UM E 34, IS S UE 3, PP . 335351, IS S N 0730-7829, ELECT RON IC ISSN 1533-8312. 2017 BY T HE REG ENT S OF T HE U NIV ER S ITY O F CA LIF ORN IA A LL
R IG HTS RES ER V ED . PL EASE D IREC T AL L REQ UEST S F OR PER MI SSION T O PHOT OCOPY O R REPR OD UCE AR T ICLE CON TEN T THR OUGH THE UN IVERS I TY OF C AL IFO RN IA PR ESS S
R EPR IN TS AND P E RM I S S I O N S W E B PA G E , HTT P :// W W W . UCPR ESS . E D U / JOU RNA L S . PHP ? P = R E P RI NTS . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/ M P .2017.34.3.335
336 Fang Liu, Cunmei Jiang, Tom Francart, Alice H. D. Chan, & Patrick C. M. Wong
Third, amusics cannot detect out-of-key notes in et al., 2012). Similarly, after seven weekly group-
Western music, or judge dissonance/consonance of singing workshops, which incorporated learning activ-
musical excerpts (Ayotte et al., 2002; Peretz, Brattico, ities such as vocal warm-ups and listening of melodies
Jrvenp, & Tervaniemi, 2009). They are also on pianos/keyboards combined with three or four
impaired in explicit judgments of melodic expectation, 15-min sessions of self-exercises with Sing and See per
musical syntax, and tonality relative to controls (Jiang, week at home, the five amusics in (Anderson et al.,
Liu, & Thompson, 2016; Omigie, Pearce, & Stewart, 2012) only improved in singing of the familiar song
2012; Zendel, Lagrois, Robitaille, & Peretz, 2015), Happy Birthday, but not in any other measures such as
despite demonstrating implicit processing of harmonic computer and vocal pitch matching, the MBEA scale
structure (Omigie, Pearce, & Stewart, 2012; Tillmann, subtest, or singing of the self-chosen song. Together,
Gosselin, Bigand, & Peretz, 2012). Finally, amusics these results suggest that passive exposure to musical
show impaired short-term memory for pitch (Albouy, stimuli and general-purpose singing or music training
Mattout, et al., 2013; Tillmann, Schulze, & Foxton, methods are not appropriate remediation strategies for
2009; Williamson & Stewart, 2010), which may result individuals with congenital amusia, who have impo-
from their deficits in fine-grained pitch processing verished auditory and memory resources, at least not
(Jiang et al., 2013). at the dosage that was prescribed.
A variety of theories have been put forward to explain However, the fact that humans can improve perception
the core deficits of amusia. One theory of amusia is that skills through learning and practice is well documented
it is a disorder of top-down connectivity (Peretz, 2013). across all sensory modalities, including auditory (Wright
This can be traced to disordered structure/function in & Zhang, 2009), visual (Gilbert & Li, 2012), tactile
the right inferior frontal gyrus (Hyde et al., 2007; Hyde, (Wong, Peters, & Goldreich, 2013), olfactory (Gottfried,
Zatorre, & Peretz, 2011), and disordered backwards 2008), and taste (Peron & Allen, 1988). Music training, in
connectivity from the inferior frontal gyrus to the audi- particular, has been shown to enhance both musical and
tory cortex (Albouy, Mattout, et al., 2013). Another speech processing, and induce substantial neurophysio-
theory, the melodic contour deafness hypothesis logical, neuroanatomical, and functional changes in the
(Patel, 2008), proposes that reduced melodic contour human brain across the lifespan (Herholz & Zatorre,
(or pitch direction) perception in amusia may have pre- 2012; Patel, 2011). It is thus surprising that the amusic
vented amusics from learning musical intervals and per- brain would be less malleable than neurotypical brains in
ceiving melodic structure. perceptual learning.
Previous evidence indicates that the amusic brain Several factors might be responsible for the limited
only has limited plasticity in response to music train- plasticity of the amusic brain documented in past
ing/listening (Peretz, 2013). Several single case reports research. First, the music training/listening activities
documented null results of regular music/piano lessons reported in previous studies did not tap directly into
and singing in choirs and school bands on amusia individual target deficit areas of amusia, e.g., impaired
(Allen, 1878; Geschwind, 1984; Lebrun, Moreau, fine-grained pitch discrimination, insensitivity to pitch
McNally-Gagnon, Mignault Goulet, & Peretz, 2012; direction, and lack of pitch awareness (Loui et al., 2008;
Peretz et al., 2002). Two recent studies also examined Loui, Kroog, Zuk, & Schlaug, 2011; Patel, 2008; Peretz
the effects of daily music listening (Mignault Goulet, et al., 2002, 2009; Stewart, 2008), but instead employed
Moreau, Robitaille, & Peretz, 2012) and weekly singing general-purpose music training methods such as daily
intervention (Anderson, Himonides, Wise, Welch, & music listening (Mignault Goulet et al., 2012), singing in
Stewart, 2012) on musical processing in amusia, with choirs or school bands (Lebrun et al., 2012; Peretz et al.,
the numbers of amusic participants being eight 2002), taking regular music/piano lessons (Allen, 1878;
(Mignault Goulet et al., 2012) and five (Anderson Geschwind, 1984), or using a broad-brush singing inter-
et al., 2012), respectively. Neither study included an vention approach (Anderson et al., 2012). These meth-
untrained amusic group as a control group. In Mignault ods, although useful, may take months or years to make
Goulet et al. (2012), after four weeks of daily half-hour significant effects (Besson, Schn, Moreno, Santos, &
listening of popular songs, the eight 10-13 year old Magne, 2007; Herholz & Zatorre, 2012; Patel, 2011),
amusic children showed no improvement in either especially for amusics who have widespread musical
behavioral (pitch change detection) or neural (the disorders. On the other hand, in the field of language
P300 component) measures of pitch processing. Thus, acquisition, it has been found that successful learning
daily music listening does not seem to be an effective benefits from starting small (Elman, 1993; Goldowsky &
strategy to reduce amusic symptoms (Mignault Goulet Newport, 1993). That is, young children, with limited
Perceptual Learning of Pitch Direction 337
cognitive and memorial capabilities, may learn language both Mandarin-speaking amusics and controls showed
through analyzing the components of complex stimuli, elevated thresholds compared to pitch direction dis-
rather than performing a holistic analysis of the whole crimination (Liu, Jiang, et al., 2012). This suggests that
form like adults do (Newport, 1988). Given the limited pitch direction identification is a more difficult (or
auditory and memory capacities for musical processing cognitively demanding) task than pitch direction dis-
in amusia, it is possible that the amusic brain is too crimination, even for tone language speakers, and espe-
overwhelmed to benefit from the vast amount of infor- cially for amusics.
mation embedded in those general-purpose music Aiming to enhance amusics fine-grained pitch dis-
training/listening activities. Alternative approaches crimination, pitch direction recognition, and pitch
targeting core deficit areas of amusia might be able to awareness, we designed and implemented an auditory
help treat amusia. training program to help amusics recognize pitch direc-
Pitch direction is a building block of melodic contour tion in music and speech. We hypothesized that train-
(Patel, 2008; Stewart, 2008), which is in turn one of the ing and improvement on pitch direction identification
most important features for the perception and storage of would provide the scaffolding for amusics to build com-
melody in memory (Dowling, 1978; Dowling & Fujitani, plex musical systems, and consequently help ameliorate
1971; Idson & Massaro, 1978). Based on the hypothesis musical processing deficits in amusia.
that amusia is at least partially due to insensitivity to the
direction of pitch movement (Loui et al., 2008; Stewart, Method
2008), or the melodic contour deafness hypothesis
(Patel, 2008), it is likely that the pitch direction deficit PARTICIPANTS
in amusia has led to developmental problems with per- Twenty Chinese-speaking amusics and 20 control par-
ception of melodic contour and music as a whole (Patel, ticipants were recruited through advertisements
2008). posted on the university bulletin board systems and
To assess the processing of pitch direction in amusia, mass mail services in Shanghai and Hong Kong,
we have used two different types of tasks in our previous China. The Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia
studies: pitch direction discrimination (Liu et al., 2010, (MBEA) (Peretz et al., 2003) was used to diagnose
on English speakers; Liu, Jiang, et al., 2012 on Mandarin amusia in these participants. Consisting of six subt-
speakers), and pitch direction identification (Liu, Xu, ests, the MBEA measures the perception of scale, con-
et al., 2012). In the discrimination task (Liu, Jiang, tour, interval, rhythm, meter, and memory of
et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2010), participants were asked melodies. Participants were classified as amusic if they
to report which of the three gliding tones differed in scored 65 or under on the pitch composite score (sum
direction from the other two (e.g., the falling glide in of the scores on the scale, contour, and interval subt-
the rising-rising-falling sequence, AXB task), thus dis- ests) (Liu et al., 2010) or below 78% correct on the
criminating the direction of pitch change. Furthermore, MBEA global score, which corresponds to two stan-
in the discrimination task, labeling of tone patterns as dard deviations below the mean score of normal con-
rising or falling was not required, and participants were trols (Peretz et al., 2003). Participants in the control
simply requested to report which was the odd one out group were chosen to match with the amusic group in
in pitch direction in a sequence of three tones. In the sex, handedness, age, music training background, and
identification task (Liu, Xu, et al., 2012), only two tones years of education, but having MBEA scores within
were presented in one trial, and participants were the normal range. Before conducting the experiments,
required to identify the direction of pitch movement the amusic group was randomly divided into two
(e.g., high-low versus low-high, two-alternative forced- subgroups: trained amusics (n = 10) were asked to
choice task). For pitch direction discrimination (Liu, participate in our pitch direction training program,
Jiang, et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2010), both Mandarin- whereas untrained amusics (n = 10) received no train-
speaking amusics and controls achieved lower (better) ing. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the
pitch thresholds than their English-speaking counter- amusic (trained versus untrained) and control groups.
parts. This superior performance on pitch direction dis- As can be seen, controls performed significantly better
crimination in Mandarin speakers may result from than amusics on the MBEA. Although trained amusics
passive perceptual learning of this sound feature in their received more years of education than the untrained
native language (Liu, Jiang, et al., 2012). However, for (p = .01), the two groups did not differ significantly in
pitch direction identification (Liu, Xu, et al., 2012), the MBEA at the pretest. Years of education was used
which requires conscious pitch direction awareness, as a covariate in the linear mixed-effects models as
338 Fang Liu, Cunmei Jiang, Tom Francart, Alice H. D. Chan, & Patrick C. M. Wong
MBEA
Pitch global
Group Age Education Scale Contour Interval Rhythm Meter Memory composite score
Amusic
M 23.55 17.20 17.65 18.60 16.85 22.75 18.60 21.55 53.10 64.44
SD 1.57 1.74 3.57 2.68 3.00 3.49 3.90 3.73 5.99 5.98
Trained
M 24.20 18.20 16.80 18.40 17.20 24.20 17.00 20.50 52.40 63.39
SD 1.69 1.55 2.94 3.27 2.90 2.90 3.94 3.72 6.45 6.11
Untrained
M 22.90 16.20 18.50 18.80 16.50 21.30 20.20 22.60 53.80 65.50
SD 1.20 1.32 4.09 2.10 3.21 3.56 3.29 3.63 5.75 5.99
t-test (T vs. U)
t 1.99 3.11 1.07 0.33 0.51 2.00 1.97 1.27 0.51 0.78
p 0.06 0.01 0.30 0.75 0.61 0.06 0.06 0.22 0.61 0.45
Control
M 23.25 17.85 28.05 28.10 27.30 27.90 26.75 28.85 83.45 92.75
SD 1.71 1.81 1.23 1.25 1.89 2.00 2.47 0.93 3.38 3.65
t-test (A vs. C)
t 0.58 1.16 12.30 14.35 13.18 5.72 7.90 8.48 19.73 18.06
p 0.57 0.25 < .001 < .001 < .001 < .001 < .001 < .001 < .001 < .001
Note: T = trained; U = untrained; A = amusic; C = control; age and education are in years; scores on the six MBEA subtests (scale, contour, interval, rhythm, meter, and
memory; Peretz et al., 2003) are in number of correct responses out of 30; the pitch composite score is the sum of the scale, contour, and interval scores; MBEA global score is
the percentage of correct responses out of the total 180 trials; t is the statistic of the Welch two sample t-test (two-tailed, df = 18 for trained versus untrained amusics and df = 38 for
amusics versus controls). Amusic participants included n = 20; 11 female, 9 male; 1 left-handed, 19 right-handed; 18 Mandarin speakers tested in Shanghai, 2 Cantonese speakers
tested in Hong Kong. Control participants included n = 20; 13 female, 7 male; 1 left-handed, 19 right-handed; 18 Mandarin speakers tested in Shanghai, 2 Cantonese speakers
tested in Hong Kong. The trained and untrained amusic groups each contained 9 Mandarin speakers (tested in Shanghai) and 1 Cantonese speaker (tested in Hong Kong).
described in the Results section. None of the partici- In particular, in the current study, we modified the
pants reported having speech or hearing disorders or protocol in Liu, Xu, et al. (2012) by using the two-
neurological/psychiatric impairments in the question- down one-up staircase method (instead of three-
naires concerning their music, language, and medical down one-up in Liu, Xu, et al., 2012) and piano tones
background. All were undergraduate or postgraduate (instead of complex tones in Liu, Xu, et al., 2012). We
students at universities in Shanghai or Hong Kong, also excluded gliding pitches (e.g., rising-falling, falling-
with Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese as their native rising), as amusics had less difficulty recognizing pitch
language, and none had received any formal extracur- direction in gliding than in discrete pitches, for both
ricular music training. Ethical approvals were granted speech and non-speech stimuli (Liu, Xu, et al., 2012).
by Shanghai Normal University and The Chinese Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of stimulus pre-
University of Hong Kong. Written informed consents sentation, with each stimulus lasting 250 ms separated
were obtained from all participants prior to the by an interstimulus interval of 250 ms. Participants
experiment. were instructed to choose between two choices given
on the computer screen (via mouse click) to indicate
TASKS the pitch pattern of the stimulus pair: (high
The experiment consisted of a practice session (with low ) or (low high ).
audiovisual feedback), a pretraining test (pretest here-
Control participants (n = 20) were administered the
after; with no feedback), 10 training sessions (with practice session and pretest only. All amusics (n = 20)
audiovisual feedback), and a posttraining test (posttest completed the practice session, pretest, and posttest (pre
hereafter; with no feedback). Tasks involved identifica- and posttest were about two weeks apart). The two
tion of pitch direction (high-low versus low-high) in amusic groups were comparable in pitch thresholds at
pairs of sounds with varying pitch distances using pretest: thresholds for speech syllable: t(18) = 0.74, p =
two-interval forced-choice (2IFC) methods, with proce- .47; thresholds for piano tone: t(18) = 0.57, p = .58. In
dure adapted from our previous study (Liu, Xu, et al., order to see whether training in pitch direction identi-
2012). fication would improve musical pitch processing, all
Perceptual Learning of Pitch Direction 339
FIGURE 2. Mean pitch thresholds (in st, or semitones) of the 20 controls, 10 trained, and 10 untrained amusics for piano tones (A) and speech syllables
(B) in pre and posttests. Controls are denoted by dark gray squares and solid lines, trained amusics by light gray triangles and solid lines, and untrained
amusics by black dots and dashed lines. Error bars represent standard errors.
FIGURE 4. Scatter plots of pre versus posttest pitch thresholds (in st, or semitones) of the 10 trained and 10 untrained amusics for piano tones (A) and
speech syllables (B). Untrained amusics are represented by black dots and dashed lines, and trained amusics are denoted by gray triangles and solid
lines. Regression lines were based on linear regressions between pre and posttest thresholds of trained/untrained amusics.
FIGURE 5. Mean scores (in number of correct responses out of 30) of the 10 trained and 10 untrained amusics for MBEA scale (A), contour (B), and
interval subtest (C) in pre and posttests. Untrained amusics are represented by black dots and dashed lines, and trained amusics are denoted by gray
triangles and solid lines. Error bars represent standard errors.
correlations between pre and posttest pitch thresholds speech syllables were less affected by pretest thresholds
for trained versus untrained amusics (Figure 4). For than for piano tones. Other effects/interactions were not
trained amusics, pre and posttest thresholds did not significant.
correlate for either piano tones, r(8) = .52, p = .13, or Figure 5 plots mean scores of the 10 trained and 10
speech syllables, r(8) = .48, p = .16, due to improvement untrained amusics for MBEA scale, contour, and inter-
from training. In contrast, untrained amusics showed val subtests at pre and posttests. These three subtests
significant positive correlations between pre and post- measure individuals abilities to process scale structure,
test thresholds for both piano tones, r(8) = .66, p = .04, melodic contour, and pitch interval in Western melodies,
and speech syllables, r(8) = .87, p = .001, which suggests respectively (Peretz et al., 2003). A linear mixed-effects
that untrained amusics tended to perform similarly at pre model was fit on posttest MBEA score with training
and posttests. Finally, there was a significant stimulus (trained versus untrained) and task (scale, contour, and
type training pretest threshold interaction, F(1, 8) interval) as fixed effects, pretest score and education
= 6.55, p = .03, as trained amusics posttest thresholds for as covariates, and participants (trained and untrained
Perceptual Learning of Pitch Direction 343
FIGURE 6. Scatter plots of pre versus posttest MBEA scores of the 10 trained and 10 untrained amusics for the scale (A), contour (B), and interval (C)
subtests. Untrained amusics are represented by black dots and dashed lines, and trained amusics are denoted by gray triangles and solid lines.
Regression lines were based on linear regressions between pre and posttest thresholds of trained/untrained amusics. There were no significant
correlations between pre and posttest MBEA scores for either trained or untrained amusics across all three subtests, presumably due to random
variations within and across participants.
music/piano lessons, daily musical listening, or being tasks, this implicit pitch processing ability does not
involved in choirs or school bands (Allen, 1878; Ander- seem to induce normal musical functioning in amusia
son et al., 2012; Geschwind, 1984; Lebrun et al., 2012; (Hutchins & Peretz, 2012; Hyde et al., 2011; Liu et al.,
Mignault Goulet et al., 2012; Peretz et al., 2002). This 2013, 2010; Loui et al., 2008; Mignault Goulet et al.,
may be due to the fact that, with limited auditory and 2012; Moreau, Jolicoeur, & Peretz, 2009, 2013; Peretz
memory capacities, individuals with congenital amusia et al., 2009). Thus, in the current study, we trained
are unable to benefit from passive exposure to musical amusics to consciously identify pitch direction by pro-
stimuli or general-purpose singing or music training viding explicit feedback after each trial. Although
methods. In light of the less is more hypothesis in focused-attention is not necessary for perceptual learn-
language acquisition (Elman, 1993; Goldowsky & New- ing (Seitz & Watanabe, 2005), learning with feedback is
port, 1993) and the pitch direction or melodic con- much more efficient than without feedback (Herzog &
tour deafness hypothesis in amusia (Loui et al., 2008; Fahle, 1998). In the current training paradigm, we used
Patel, 2008; Stewart, 2008), the current investigation visual displays of pitch contours to help amusics
used a scaffolding approach and conducted the first develop pitch direction awareness. Given the possible
auditory training study to explore whether pitch direc- link between pitch processing and spatial processing in
tion identification could be improved through percep- amusia (Douglas & Bilkey, 2007; although see Tillmann
tual learning, and if yes, whether it could further help et al., 2010; Williamson, Cocchini, & Stewart, 2011, for
ameliorate musical processing deficits in amusia. After different results), it will be interesting to find out
10 sessions, trained amusics showed improved pitch whether perceptual training of complicated melodic
direction identification thresholds, but did not outper- contour patterns and their visual displays will help ame-
form untrained amusics in musical processing, as liorate musical processing deficits in amusia, and how
indexed by the three pitch-based MBEA subtests. This learned patterns are encoded in auditory and visual
suggests that improvement in pitch direction proces- cortical networks (Li, Pich, & Gilbert, 2008).
sing does not necessarily entail improvement in musi- Both primates and humans represent pitch direction
cal processing. in the right lateral Heschls gyrus (Bendor, 2012; Bendor
Thus, it is worth noting that the ability to discrimi- & Wang, 2005; Griffiths & Hall, 2012; Johnsrude, Pen-
nate pitch direction develops with age in children (Fan- hune, & Zatorre, 2000; Patterson, Uppenkamp, Johns-
court, Dick, & Stewart, 2013). Apart from amusics, rude, & Griffiths, 2002; Tramo, Cariani, Koh, Makris, &
some typical adult listeners also show difficulty in pitch Braida, 2005). Previous studies indicate that animals
direction recognition (Foxton, Weisz, Bauchet- such as monkeys and ferrets can be trained to discrim-
Lecaignard, Delpuech, & Bertrand, 2009; Mathias, Bai- inate pitch direction (Brosch, Selezneva, Bucks, &
ley, Semal, & Demany, 2011; Mathias, Micheyl, & Bailey, Scheich, 2004; Selezneva, Scheich, & Brosch, 2006;
2010; Neuhoff, Knight, & Wayand, 2002; Semal & Walker, Schnupp, Hart-Schnupp, King, & Bizley,
Demany, 2006), so do individuals with developmental 2009). However, for humans, difficulty in pitch direc-
dyslexia (Ziegler, Pech-Georgel, George, & Foxton, tion identification persists even after more than 2,000
2012). This suggests that pitch direction sensitivity may identification trials followed by visual feedback in an
be a marker for auditory, language, and musical abilities adaptive testing procedure for two out of three partici-
(Loui et al., 2008, 2011; Patel, 2008; Stewart, 2008). pants (Semal & Demany, 2006). This may be because it
Interestingly, however, Mandarin-speaking amusics and takes at least 4-8 hours of training for pitch discrimina-
controls in fact show lower pitch direction discrimina- tion to be optimized (Micheyl, Delhommeau, Perrot, &
tion thresholds in comparison to their English-speaking Oxenham, 2006), and learning and memory need to be
counterparts, presumably because of perceptual learn- facilitated through sleep (Diekelmann, 2014). Sensitivity
ing of a tone language (Liu, Jiang, et al., 2012; Liu et al., to pitch direction emerges from asymmetric lateral inhi-
2010). However, without conscious recognition of the bition among neighboring cells in tonotopic maps
direction of pitch movements (Liu, Xu, et al., 2012), (Husain, Tagamets, Fromm, Braun, & Horwitz, 2004;
Mandarin-speaking amusics still demonstrate impaired Ohl, Schulze, Scheich, & Freeman, 2000; Rauschecker,
melodic contour processing compared to normal con- 1998a, 1998b; Shamma, Fleshman, Wiser, & Versnel,
trols (Jiang et al., 2010). 1993). To our knowledge, our study is the first to sys-
Furthermore, although there has been evidence sug- tematically train a large sample of human listeners on
gesting that amusics were able to process subtle pitch pitch direction identification (Walker, Bizley, King, &
changes and pitch direction preattentively in neuroima- Schnupp, 2011). Neuroimaging studies are required to
ging, ERP (event-related potentials), and pitch imitation explore how this behavioral improvement is linked to
Perceptual Learning of Pitch Direction 345
anatomical patterns of inhibitory connections between future training studies would be to introduce 3-tone
cells in the human auditory cortex. sequences to amusics after they reach normal thresholds
Overall, our results suggest that amusics sensitivity to for two-tone sequences, then once they master those,
pitch direction can be improved through incremental introduce 4-tone sequences, and so on.
perceptual learning to a level closer to normal limits. Alternatively, our finding that the trained amusics
However, pitch direction training alone may not be able achieved pitch direction identification thresholds similar
to increase amusics musical pitch perception. This to the normal level, but remained within the amusic
stands in contrast with the transferability between pitch range for the MBEA pitch-based subtests suggests that
discrimination and speech processing (Bidelman, Gan- pitch direction deficits may not be the sole cause for
dour, & Krishnan, 2011; Bidelman, Hutka, & Moreno, amusia, and fine-grained pitch perception may also play
2013; Lee & Hung, 2008; Pfordresher & Brown, 2009; an important role in musical processing (Vuvan, Nunes-
Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees, & Kraus, 2007). Several pos- Silva, & Peretz, 2015). It is likely that amusia emerges
sibilities may underlie our current results. from a combination of deficits, e.g., a pitch change/direc-
First, previous research on humans suggests that tion deficit, a tonal memory deficit, and a deficit with
training on pitch discrimination at certain frequencies, conscious access to implicit knowledge of musical pat-
with different timbres, or across different durations and terns. That is, the melodic contour deficit may only be
ears may or may not generalize to other untrained con- part of the picture. Further training studies comparing
ditions (Amitay, Hawkey, & Moore, 2005; Delhom- different strategies/designs are required to confirm this
meau, Micheyl, Jouvent, & Collet, 2002; Demany, hypothesis.
1985; Demany & Semal, 2002; Irvine, Martin, Klimkeit, Apart from a wide range of auditory and musical
& Smith, 2000). This suggests that auditory perceptual impairments, amusics also showed difficulties in learn-
learning may be condition-specific. As reviewed by Seitz ing frequencies and conditional probabilities of
and Watanabe (2005), task-irrelevant learning is possi- pitch events in tonal sequences (Loui & Schlaug, 2012;
ble only when task-irrelevant features are related to Peretz, Saffran, Schn, & Gosselin, 2012; but see Omigie
target features. For example, only when the direction & Stewart, 2011, for different results). Furthermore,
of a subliminal motion is temporally-paired with the although amusics demonstrated implicit processing of
task target, can this motion be passively learned (Seitz melodic structure/expectation and harmonic structure
& Watanabe, 2003). Our finding is consistent with this in Western music, they were unable to perform as well
hypothesis, as enhanced pitch direction identification as controls in an explicit manner (Albouy, Schulze,
only has a subtle positive impact on musical contour Caclin, & Tillmann, 2013; Jiang et al., 2016; Omigie
processing for trained amusics, but not on musical pro- et al., 2012; Tillmann et al., 2012). Further studies are
cessing as a whole. This is presumably because pitch required to use the scaffolding/incremental learning
direction processing is only a small part of musical pro- approach to train amusics on other aspects of auditory/
cessing (Peretz & Coltheart, 2003; Stewart, 2011). Given musical processing, especially in an explicit manner. In
that pitch direction identification mainly reflects addition, given the link between language learning and
melodic contour perception, training of pitch direction music learning (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012; Loui et al.,
may not have a direct impact on tonality (MBEA scale 2011; Patel, 2011), it will be interesting to examine
subtest) and pitch change (MBEA interval subtest) per- whether and to what extent our training paradigm in
ception in amusia. pitch direction identification can be used to facilitate
Furthermore, one reason that the training did not language learning in second language acquisition (Chan-
enhance amusic performance on the MBEA contour drasekaran, Kraus, & Wong, 2012; Chandrasekaran,
subtest to the normal level may be that the training only Sampath, & Wong, 2010), and to treat other learning
involved two-tone sequences, while the MBEA melodies disabilities such as developmental dyslexia (Besson
involve longer sequences of notes (the numbers of notes et al., 2007; Loui et al., 2011; Ziegler et al., 2012).
in the MBEA contour subtest melodies ranged between Finally, it is worth noting that the current study is
7 and 21, with mean = 10 and SD = 2.92). Since amusics only an initial attempt to improve pitch direction pro-
are known to have problems with short-term memory cessing in amusia through auditory training. In partic-
for tone patterns (Albouy, Mattout, et al., 2013; Till- ular, in order to optimize learning effects in amusia, we
mann et al., 2009; Williamson & Stewart, 2010), it is used the same stimuli and test procedure in pre and
possible that training would be more effective if amusics posttests, which allowed direct comparisons between
were adaptively trained on pitch direction tasks that tasks and groups. Future studies are required to explore
involved longer tone sequences. Thus, one strategy for whether amusics are able to learn to perform cognitively
346 Fang Liu, Cunmei Jiang, Tom Francart, Alice H. D. Chan, & Patrick C. M. Wong
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Appendix
APPENDIX TABLE 1. The Linear Mixed-effects Model on Log-transformed Thresholds of the Two Amusic Groups