di Dr. Lauren Stewart
… Thank you to everyone who has participated in our research!
Since the first listening test was launched at the end of January 2006 it has been taken 195968 times. The second test was added in 2007 and has been taken 89590 times.
This page contains a summary of the study’s progress. The histograms and mean data for each task are still shown below.
Amusia: the story so far…
For most of us the appreciation of music is acquired effortlessly, much like language, in the early years of our lives. This appreciation forms an important social, cultural and emotional role, indeed one that is so central to everyday life that it is difficult for us to imagine being without.
However, people with a disorder recently termed ‘congenital amusia’ fail to recognize common tunes from their culture, do not hear when notes are ‘out of tune’ and sometimes report that music sounds like a ‘din’ or ‘banging’. At a perceptual level, congenital amusia is most commonly associated with finding it difficult to notice changes in pitch.
People who experience these phenomena when listening to music are otherwise socially, emotionally and intellectually normal. Famous figures in history, Milton Friedman and Che Guevara, are thought to have been afflicted with the disorder, though such cases must remain anecdotal.
Although difficulties in other areas of sound perception are not immediately obvious, current studies are investigating whether the processing of contours in speech, and other higher-order patterns of sound, might be affected. …
Fonte: Delosis.com