Abstract: Pitch processing is an important dimension in music and speech. Congenital amusia is a deficit in the perception and production of musical pitch. Testing the pitch processing of music and speech in amusia helped clarify the question of whether or not music and language share cognitive and neural resources. It has been shown that amusics have problems in processing musical pitch, and the pitch deficits have affected their pitch processing of speech. Moreover, tonal language experience may not compensate for pitch deficits in amusia. The findings support the resource-sharing framework suggesting shared cognitive and neural resources in music and language (Patel, 2003, 2008, in press), and may provide evidence for clinical practice in aphasia to a certain extent.

Key words: congenital amusia, pitch deficits, music, speech, pitch processing