Phonological Awareness and Reading Impairments in Cantonese Speakers With Congenital Amusia: Comorbid Dyslexia Traits Matter

PURPOSE: This study investigated the nature and underlying mechanisms of phonological awareness and literacy impairments in Cantonese-speaking adults with congenital amusia (amusia hereafter) while accounting for the potential role of dyslexia traits. METHOD: Twenty-one Cantonese speakers with amusia and 21 matched controls were assessed using segmental (onset phoneme deletion and spoonerism) and suprasegmental (tone oddity) phonological awareness tasks, literacy tasks (word reading, 1-min word reading, and dictation), and auditory perception threshold tasks (pitch discrete, pitch glide, and rise time). RESULTS: The amusia group significantly underperformed the control group on all phonological awareness tasks as well as on word reading. Within the amusia group, 38% of participants exhibited dyslexia traits. Subgroup analyses distinguishing between individuals with pure amusia and those with amusia and comorbid dyslexia traits further revealed that individuals with pure amusia still demonstrated difficulties in spoonerism and tone oddity, but not in onset phoneme deletion and word reading. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that pitch height perception was a significant predictor of amusical participants' performance in spoonerism and tone oddity. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggested that the amusia group has deficits in segmental phonological awareness under the high-memory-load condition, as well as deficits in suprasegmental phonological awareness associated with impaired pitch height perception. Although the amusia group as a whole also showed segmental phonological awareness deficits under the low-memory-load condition and word reading deficits, these group-level deficiencies were largely driven by the amusia subgroup with dyslexia traits. These findings highlight the importance of taking dyslexia status into account in amusia studies. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33288876.