Word stress perception by congenital amusics

Congenital Amusia is a developmental disorder that is defined by diffi- culties with the perception of pitch and rhythm. While it used to be described as a disorder of musical pitch perception, recent publications have shown that congeni- tal amusia also affects linguistic pitch perception. In this chapter we report the first study of word stress processing by congenital amusics. We designed a behav- ioral identification task and a mismatch negativity study using German minimal stress pairs as basis for our stimuli. We considered the acoustic parameters funda- mental frequency (pitch), duration, intensity and spectral slope. Behavioral results surprisingly revealed no pitch processing difficulties for word stress in the amusic group in comparison to controls, and amusics also showed a better usage of dura- tional cues. The electrophysiological results revealed that amusics consistently have an MMN, though it is smaller than that of controls. The present results war- rant further investigation of the use of linguistic cues by congenital amusics.