We examined memory for pitch in congenital amusia in two tasks. In one task, we varied the pitch distance between the target and comparison tone from 4 to 9 semitones and inserted either a silence or 6 interpolated tones between the tones to be compared. In a second task, we manipulated the number of pitches to be retained in sequences of length 1, 3, or 5. Amusics’ sensitivity to pitch distanc...

Perceived pitch differences between high vs. low vowels with identical F0 have been reported in the literature. On the speech production side, in German a specific phenomenon is found: Tense and lax vowels differ in their tongue height but tend to have a similar F0. On the speech perception side, our aim was to test whether German listeners judge the tongue height or real F0 of tense and lax vo...

Pitch discrimination is important for language or music processing. Previous studies indicate that auditory perception depends on pre-target neural activity. However, so far the pre-target electrophysiological conditions which enable the detection of small pitch changes are not well studied, but might yield important insights into pitch-processing. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) source im...

Kubovy and Van Valkenburg (2001) have posited a theory of auditory “objecthood” that draws heavily on a proposed analogy between the auditory and visual systems. Specifically, they have suggested that the auditory dimension of pitch is analogous to the visual dimension of spatial extent and that pitch is an “indispensable attribute” in the formation of auditory objects. In their development of ...

Congenital amusia is a disorder that affects the perception and production of music. While amusia has been associated with deficits in pitch discrimination, several reports suggest that memory deficits also play a role. The present study investigated short-term memory span for pitch-based and verbal information in 14 individuals with amusia and matched controls. Analogous adaptive-tracking proc...

Language and music epitomize the complex representational and computational capacities of the human mind. Strikingly similar in their structural and expressive features, a longstanding question is whether the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying these abilities are shared or distinct--either from each other or from other mental processes. One prominent feature shared between language ...