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Tone deaf miss speech nuances People who are tone deaf may have difficulty picking up nuances like anger, fear or sarcasm in everyday speech, according to new Australian research. Macquarie University psychology professor Bill Thompson says people who can't hear music accurately - amusics - may also miss out on the subtle shades of meaning conveyed by a person's tone of voice. The findings will be presented at a music science conference in Sydney. "It is possible that somebody who is completely tone deaf might not pick up that somebody they're talking to is getting increasingly irritable," Prof Thompson told AAP. advertisement The study found tone deaf individuals also had "dramatic" difficulties decoding emotions such as fear and irritation. "It kind of makes sense in a way because music communicates emotions through changes in pitch, changes in loudness and through its pace and timbre - all of the same qualities that communicate emotions in speech and tone of voice," he said. Prof Thompson, who was presenting his paper on intonation insensitivity at the International Conference on Music Communication Science at the University of NSW, said tone of voice, or "speech prosody", can completely change the meaning of a sentence. "For example if someone says `It's nice to see you', you don't know whether they're being sarcastic or if they're genuinely happy," he said. Around four per cent of Australians exhibit congenital tone deafness, or "amusia". There's no known environmental cause and it seems to come from birth, according to Prof Thompson. A further 20 per cent of the population incorrectly suspect they suffer from the disorder. Research suggests 15 per cent of all amusics have problems differentiating a question from a statement. Prof Thompson says amusia is like being colour blind. "Tone deaf people don't know that they can't sing, they need someone else to tell them that they can't sing," he said. "They're often the ones belting out songs at parties and singing right off key because they genuinely do not hear that things are not right." But it's not all bad news. Prof Thompson says amusics can often pick up a person's meaning from context or body language. His study found they didn't have trouble with the more obvious emotions like happiness and sadness. He described the link between amusia and decoding emotions in speech as "groundbreaking". It will be presented at next year's Neuroscience and Music Conference in Montreal and published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Prof Thompson and colleagues both here and overseas have also identified for the first time individuals who suffer from selective rhythm impairment. This occurs when they have problems with rhythm but not pitch. |
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