Abstract: Congenital amusia is a lifelong music deficiency that cannot be attributed to abnormal intelligence, hearing impairment, brain damage or lack of normal exposure. It has been reported that congenital amusia affected about 4% of the general population in Western culture，in contrast the rate was 3.4% in China. However, whether congenital amusia is a music-specific deficiency or a general cognitive ability deficiency remains a controversial issue. Using behavioral measures, both congenital amusics and matched controls completed the spatial representation of pitch task, spatial mental rotation task, and pitch discrimination task in the present study; the aim of present study was to explore whether deficiency of congenital amusia was limited to music domain or extended to other non-music domains. Thirty seven volunteers were initially tested with the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). Participants who achieved scores below 65 in the first three subtests (Scale, Contour and Interval) of the MBEA were considered as congenital amusics (N=14). Fourteen matched controls were also recruited. Thepitch spatial representation task, mental rotation task and pitch discrimination task were complete by both groups. In the pitch spatial representation task, the standard deviation of the X position was analyzed using mixed ANOVA, which was conducted with 2(group) × 6(pitch). A significant main effect of group was found, showing that congenital amusics performed worse than controls in pitch spatial representation. Mental rotation task revealed a significant main effect of group in error rate, showing worse performance in individuals with congenital amusia than controls. In the pitch discrimination task, the results showed that the error rates of congenital amusics were significantly worse than those of controls. In summary, the results of the present study demonstrated that the deficits in congenital amusia extended to spatial representation of pitch and even spatial mental rotation processing. The present findings supported the viewpoint that music processing and spatial processing might share common cognitive mechanisms, which suggested that congenital amusia was a general cognitive ability deficit rather than a music-specific deficit.

Key words: Congenital amusia, Pitch spatial representation, Mental rotaton, Pitch discrimination

摘要： 利用音高空间表征任务、心理旋转任务和音高辨别任务，探讨先天性音乐障碍者音高空间表征能力、心理旋转加工能力和音高辨别能力。结果发现：先天性音乐障碍组音高空间表征任务标准差、心理旋转任务错误率和音高辨别任务错误率均显著高于控制组。 这些结果表明先天性音乐障碍并非音乐特异性障碍，而是音乐相关性障碍。

关键词: 先天性音乐障碍, 音高空间表征, 心理旋转, 音高辨别