{"id":1542,"date":"2021-03-28T01:22:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T01:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicianscience.org\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2021-03-28T01:22:59","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T01:22:59","slug":"poor-speech-can-be-related-to-poor-manual-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicianscience.org\/index.php\/poor-speech-can-be-related-to-poor-manual-timing\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor speech can be related to poor manual timing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Above – photo by Todd Owyoung<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Title of paper under discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pitch and Timing Abilities in Inherited Speech and Language Impairment<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine J. Alcock, Richard E. Passingham, Kate Watkins, <\/em>and Faraneh Vargha-Khadem<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brain and Language 75, 34\u201346 (2000) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link to paper<\/a> (free access)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Above – Great Ormond St Hospital<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some members of a large extended family – the \u2018KE family\u2019 – suffer from an inherited speech and language disorder, and have generously volunteered over the years to take part in scientific studies looking to investigate the causes of this impairment.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A research team from the University of Oxford, University College London and Great Ormond Street hospital approached them with a series of tasks to test their ability to produce and perceive a) pitch and b) rhythm.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affected family members had no problem perceiving or producing pitch, whether single notes or familiar melodies. But they were deficient in the perception and production – both vocally and manually<\/em> – of rhythm, suggesting that timing impairment is at the root of their linguistic deficit.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Background <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of 30 members of the extended KE family, 15 have been diagnosed with a developmental disorder of speech and language, inherited as a dominant trait. The impairment is both expressive (making speech) and receptive (understanding speech), and afflicted members also have difficulties with nonverbal oral movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aware that the perception and production of both pitch<\/em> and rhythm<\/em> are critical not just to musical but also to linguistic ability, our team of researchers devised tasks for the affected family members to find out if their rhythm and\/or pitch processing abilities were impaired in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous research had suggested rhythm\/timing<\/em> processing – especially fine-grained timing discrimination – is generally a \u2018left brain\u2019 phenomenon, in contrast to the \u2018right-brained\u2019 pitch<\/em> processing. Hence the authors were keen to compare their test results with brain scans of the affected family members, looking specifically for any associated abnormalities in such pitch-processing, and\/or timing-processing, areas of the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Method<\/strong> and Results<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside 9 affected members of the KE family, 51 \u2018control\u2019 participants took part in this study, with age ranges matched accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tasks fell into two groups: perception<\/em> (of rhythm and pitch) and production<\/em> (of rhythm and pitch).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Above – photo by Rozette Rago<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perception tasks<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three different sets of perception tasks were devised: pitch discrimination, melody discrimination and rhythm discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the pitch discrimination<\/em> procedure \u201ctwo musical notes were presented in succession, with half the pairs being the same and with the frequency difference in the other half ranging from one semitone to a major 7th.\u201c After each pair of notes participants had to indicate whether the two were \u2018same\u2019 or \u2018different\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two groups (KE family members and Controls) scored equally accurately in these tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In each of the melody discrimination<\/em> tasks a familiar melody was played, followed either by an identical rendering or by an altered version. Again participants were asked to indicate \u2018same\u2019 or \u2018different\u2019 after each pair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And again the two groups achieved similar levels of accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirdly, participants completed a rhythm discrimination<\/em> task, in which \u201cRhythms were presented in pairs, half of which did not differ and in half of which in the second rhythm the length of notes was altered without changing the number of notes or the overall time signature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this task the affected KE family members performed less well than the controls:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Production tasks<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants underwent three different sets of production tasks: pitch production, melody production and rhythm production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the pitch production<\/em> procedure the subject was asked to sing individual notes after the experimenter had sung them. If the answer was within a semitone it was marked as \u2018correct\u2019, otherwise \u2018incorrect\u2019. (The marking was done by ear, and then checked by a computer program).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two groups did not differ in their overall accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the melody production<\/em> tasks participants were given the title and first line of well-known songs (chosen to be age-appropriate) then asked to sing as much as they could of that song (the notes only if they couldn\u2019t remember the words). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, the two groups did not differ in overall accuracy in this task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Above – photo by Juan Moyano<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The rhythm production<\/em> tasks came in two blocks – manual and vocal. In each block the experimenter presented 14 different rhythms, each one 4-9 notes long. In the first block the experimenter tapped out each rhythm on the table and asked the participant to manually reproduce it, also by tapping, straight after. In the second block the experimenter vocalised the rhythms to the sound of the letter \u2018p\u2019, asking the participant to repeat each one vocally. As before, each participant\u2019s answers were assessed by ear (of the experimenter), and then checked by a computer program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turned out that, according to the experimenter\u2019s aural assessments, the affected KE family members successfully reproduced fewer rhythms than the controls both manually and vocally. (The computer analysis was more forgiving, declaring that affected family members were poorer than the controls on the manual rhythms only. However the authors argue that subtleties of note beginnings and rhythmic phrasing are better perceived aurally than by their computer program, so are confident to declare the experimenter\u2019s judgement as the more sophisticated):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors conclude that \u201cThe affected family members were not impaired on any tasks involving musical intonation, but they were impaired on tasks involving the perception and production of rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, they declare, is in agreement with an earlier research project<\/a> which observed that children with language impairment \u201cperformed more poorly on tasks involving perception of rapid timing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially interesting to our authors was the finding that manual rhythm production is impaired in the affected KE family members; such an impairment, they argue, taken together with the language impairment, rather suggests \u201ca central deficit in the processing of timing\u201d of these participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although previous research had come to similar conclusions – that \u201ca pervasive difficulty with temporal [timing] processing underlies specific language impairment\u201d – this present study demonstrated such timing difficulties exist at much slower tempos than previously tested, right down to one beat\/second, suggesting that the impairment may be \u201cone of patterns of timing rather than of processing very fast stimuli\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the possible neural<\/em> basis of this family\u2019s linguistic impairment, the authors quote a recent paper describing brain abnormalities in those family members in regions associated with timing (the head of the caudate nucleus and \u201cmany motor-related areas of the left hemisphere\u201d). This leads them to present such brain scans as further evidence that timing impairment could be central to their symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Above – caudate nucleus (in red)<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Coda<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Konnakkol Duet\u2019<\/a> by Vidwan B R Somashekar Jois and Kumari V Shivapriya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title of paper under discussion Pitch and Timing Abilities in Inherited Speech and Language Impairment Authors Katherine J. Alcock, Richard E. Passingham, Kate Watkins, and Faraneh Vargha-Khadem Journal Brain and Language 75, 34\u201346 (2000) Link to paper (free access) Overview Some members of a large extended family – the \u2018KE family\u2019 – suffer from an …<\/p>\n

Poor speech can be related to poor manual timing<\/span> Read More \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disorder","category-musician","category-timing"],"yoast_head":"\nPoor speech can be related to poor manual timing - ADRIAN BRADBURY cellist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discussion of a paper on Musician, Disorder and Timing, hosted by cellist Adrian Bradbury\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicianscience.org\/index.php\/poor-speech-can-be-related-to-poor-manual-timing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poor speech can be related to poor manual timing - 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