Amusia

[khiemtran]

An interesting survey from the Newcastle University Medical School presented by www.hearhere.org.uk.

The first challenge is offered with kind permission from Professor Timothy Griffiths, Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University Medical School. Professor Griffiths is researching how people are affected by amusia, a disorder that is indicated by the inability to recognize musical tones or rhythms or to reproduce them. Amusia can be congenital (present at birth) or be acquired sometime later in life (as from brain damage).

The test consists of listening to pairs of short tunes and stating if they sound the same or different.

Warning: there are two sets of 30 pairs, so it does take a little while to complete.

I got 21/30 on the first test (well below average) and 30/30 on the second. Histograms of the full results so far available here.

Comments

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

30/30 on both -- which surprised me slightly because I was uncertain on a few answers in the 1st set. I was also surprised to find the second set definitely easier, since it was all about rhythm and I'm better at melody than rhythm. I conclude that the second set is "objectively" easier, though I have no idea *why* (or how you'd measure something like that...)

(Edited: Hmm, I've looked at the results now and the average of correct answers is in fact higher for the first set, though it's only by less than a percentage point. Oh well.)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought the second set was much easier too. I guess it does confirm that my sense of pitch is not very good. It would be interesting to see what it was I got wrong in the first set. There were some where the differences seemed so slight that I answered "same" even though they "felt" different, on the grounds that they can't *all* be different.