An acoustical study of vocal pitch matching in congenital amusia

Vocal pitch matching is a foundational skill for singing and is an interesting place to study the relationship between pitch perception and production. To better understand this relationship, we assessed pitch-matching abilities in congenital amusics, who have documented disabilities in pitch perception, and in matched controls under normal, masked, and guided feedback conditions. Their vocal productions were analyzed for fundamental frequency and showed that amusics were significantly less accurate at pitch matching than the controls. However, five of the six amusics showed a significant correlation between their produced pitches and the target pitch. Feedback condition had no effect on pitch-matching accuracy. These results show impaired vocal pitch-matching abilities in amusics but also show a relationship between perceived and produced pitches.