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Updated: Jul 29, 2026

Uncovering Beat Deafness: Detecting Rhythm Disorders with Synchronized Finger Tapping and Perceptual Timing Tasks
Published on: March 16, 2015
Congenital amusia interferes with the ability to synchronize with music
Simone Dalla Bella1, Isabelle Peretz
1Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. dalla-bella.2@osu.edu
Abstract:
Eight adults with a music-specific learning disability (i.e., tone deafness, but we prefer the term "congenital amusia") were asked to tap along with music (e.g., Ravel's Bolero) and with nonmusical isochronous sequences (i.e., noise bursts). The amusic persons' tapping performance was poorly synchronized with music compared to that of nine matched control participants. By contrast, synchronization with the noise bursts was normal, suggesting that amusic persons' timing difficulty is limited to music.
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