Experimental Study On Rhythm Perception Of People With Amusia

The term amusia refers to the inability to produce or comprehend music or musical sounds congenially or acquired as a result of environmental or cultural facts. Based on the loss of musical ability resulting from amusia, it can be classified into susceptive amusia and expressive amusia. In addition, according to the causes of amusia there are also two general classifications:congenital amusia and acquired amusia.Throughout the domestic and foreign studies of amusia. there still exist many controversial questions. At present, studies of the pitch working deficit of people with amusia have been demonstrated, whereas there are still major disagreements over studies of music rhythm perception. Some researchers hold the opinion that people with amusia have problems with rhythm perception, while others take the opposite view that the rhythm perception of people with amusia will be affected only with pitch interference. By self-made music materials, this study aims at the question whether people with amusia have problems with rhythm perception and whether pitch working have interference with rhythm working.Experiment1aims to choose testes for our experiments by Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). As the selection of testes of amusia concerns the experimental results, comprehensive understanding of such aspects of every voluntary testes as early musical experience, training, listening habits and musical difficulties and so on is required before selection to screen out real subjects with amusia. Then MBEA is carried out for103college students with musical troubles on their own account and20subjects are successfully screened out.Experiment2aims to find out whether people with amusia have problems in perception of the variation in meter. The experimental materials are80sound clips with seven sounds of duple meter and80sound clips with ten sounds of triple meter. The last sound appears under three conditions:in advance, lag behind and keep constant. The variable quantity of the sound sequence has four levels,10%,12%,15%and20%. Testes are required to judge under which condition the last sound of seven sounds or ten sounds turns up. Statistics shows that there is deficit of rhythm perception for people of amusia to some extent and they can’t perceive rhythm threshold like most people do. Also, with the increasing of difficulty in rhythm perception tasks, there is more significant difference with the control group.Experiment3is to examine whether the rhythm perception of people with amusia will be affected by the pitch working. Studies have shown that rhythm perception of people with amusia is weakened with their pitch disorders.80questions (40ones for each under two listening conditions) are self-made with the help of related literature and reference to the difficulty level of the MBEA. To ensure the effectiveness of the experiment, the materials are firstly for test on27college students whose major are not music. Finally60questions are filtered out for final experimental materials by screening out the questions with great or little difficulty. The experimental tasks include30pure rhythmic tasks and30rhythmic tasks with melody. In every task, there are two similar or different pure rhythmic clips or rhythmic clips with melody and there is a3-second interval between two rhythmic clips. The testes are asked to decide whether the two rhythmic clips are different or not. Results show that there is no remarkable difference for the testes in completion of two tasks. Results indicate that the rhythm perception for people with amusia does not decrease due to the participation of melody. Thus it can be inferred that the impact of pitch of amusia on the rhythm perception only exists in specific stimulus materials such as the tone sequence of single tone. However there is no difference in complete sound clips.Results of this experiment show that the test scores of people with amusia in six items of the MBEA are significantly lower than those of the ordinary people, especially in such aspects of pitch as scale, melodic contour and musical interval. Compared with the normal subjects, there is great difference of rhythm perception for people with amusia, whereas the deficit in pitch working does not affect rhythm perception of people with amusia.It is of great value and educational significance to carry on a study of amusia. At present, there are still so many problems to be resolved, especially on the neurophysiological and psychological mechanisms of amusia. Different experimental materials and varied research methods are demanded and will be employed for future and further study of amusia.