中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: A gradual increase in the cases of musical alexia who has sustained brain damage, and then the processing of musical staff reading has been emphasized. However, there are few studies about developmental music dyslexia, defined as difficulty with learning to read music despite normal intelligence and opportunities. Gordon (2000) proposed that although the inability to read a musical score may result from a cerebral lesion it may also occur as a developmental disorder. Gordon related two short anecdotes involving children (aged 10 and 12, respectively) who, despite excellent progress with piano lessons in most respects, still had exceptional difficulties in reading a musical score. Gordon urged readers to provide further reports of such individuals and to suggest how they may be helped. Recently, Lee, Huang, Yen, Lee, & Chuang (2006) also reported a case, a graduate student (age 19), who was a slow musical reader and unable to decipher the musical notation, but could play on a flute for any song what he heard. In this study, we screen developmental music dyslexics to explore their music-reading ability. Additionally, the position emission tomography (PET) study had showed that when the person read a musical score, visual areas were activated; more specifically, bilateral activation of extrastriate visual areas occurred. What was noteworthy was that the activity was centered in the left occipitoparietal junction, in a region dorsal to that activated during the reading of language (Sergent, Zuck, Terriah, & MacDonald, 1992). This finding suggests that more dorsal regions may be involved in reading musical notation because this task places larger demands on spatial-processing abilities. Therefore, it can be predicted that developmental musical alexia may perform poorer than the musical past master in visual spatial-processing tasks.Methods: To test the notion, the authors differentiate between groups with musical alexia or past master, and then assess their spatial-processing ability. First, all participants complete a screening questionnaire and the battery of two subtests of the Basic Music Notes Assessment (BMNA). The former includes questions addressing demographic background, self-assessment of music-reading difficulties, and years of music instruction. The latter developed by Lee and collaborators includes two subtests, the pitch reading and rhythm reading tests, to assess participant's music-reading abilities. In the pitch reading test, the participants are required to write down the note names on the staff. In the rhythm reading test, the participants must judge whether the notes properly fitted the duration of the measure. Second, all participants complete a spatial-processing task. They are required to identify the location of each note on the musical staff. On a complementary note, following are the diagnostic criteria for Developmental Music Dyslexia in this paper: A. He reports that he had music-reading difficulties by himself. B. Music Reading achievement, as measured by individually administered standardized tests of reading accuracy or comprehension (the BMNA battery), is substantially below that expected given the person's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education (a confidence interval for the mean of controls).Results: The results show that musical alexia performs slower than the musical past master in the spatial-processing task. Amount of music instruction does not influence above results. First, 12 musical alexics and 27 non musical alexics are compared, musical alexics obtain lower scores on the BMNA battery than the others. Additionally, musical alexics show longer response time in the spatial-processing task than the others. But years of music training of musical alexics are fewer than the others, it may influence above results. Second, in order to keep music instruction constant, we compare 12 musical alexics and 12 musical past masters with the same years of music trainings, musical alexics still obtain lower scores on the BMNA battery than the others. Once again, musical alexics show longer response time on the spatial-processing task than the others.Conclusions: The present study demonstrates that the high correlation seems to exist between musical staff reading and spatial-processing ability. In musical notation, each note has a particular location on the musical staff (which comprises five lines). High pitch is used as up and low pitch as down because of the natural tendency to perceive higher pitch as higher spatial location. The relationship between the pitch of two notes is depicted in musical notation by the spatial distance between the notes. For example, G is only slightly higher in pitch than F, it is located just a little above F, whereas because C is significantly higher in pitch than G, it is located substantially above G. Therefore, to read musical notes needs to process the spatial location of a note. In other words, music-reading involves spatial-processing abilities. The present study concludes musical dyslexics have the visuospatial defect so that they have difficulties in reading comprehension, and it's consistent with the hypothesis of the parietal cortex dysfunction of musical dyslexics.P387-402