PrepTest 149, Section 4, Question 20
Neuroscientists subjected volunteers with amusia—difficulty telling different melodies(51 more words not shown)
The statements above, if true,(9 more words not shown)
- APeople who are(12 more words not shown)
- BAmusia results more(13 more words not shown)
- CPeople who are(22 more words not shown)
- DThe ability to(19 more words not shown)
- EWhereas perception of(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
They can still hear the timing change.
Difficulty recognizing melodies doesn't automatically tell us which part of the task is going wrong. Pitch and timing are different features. Here the volunteers couldn't detect the pitch shifts, but they could track sequences and notice even slight changes in timing.
What we’re looking for
For the best-supported hypothesis, I'd look toward pitch as the problem. An inability to perceive timing doesn't look like the main explanation for these volunteers' difficulty with melodies when that ability is still working.
Working the answers
- A
Having an ability isn't the same as having a heightened ability. These volunteers might have ordinary timing perception. We also aren't told that they developed it to compensate for their difficulty with pitch. A adds both an enhanced skill and a story about how it developed.
- BCorrect
The volunteers have trouble discerning pitch while retaining timing perception. That supports the hypothesis that amusia results more from the pitch difficulty than from a timing difficulty. B uses the contrast in the results without claiming timing is irrelevant to music or that this experiment establishes every cause of amusia.
- C
We aren't shown that putting the pitches into a melody lets the volunteers distinguish them. Tracking when tones occur is different from hearing the pitch difference between them. C proposes a successful workaround that the reported timing result doesn't establish.
- D
Both skills could matter. Imagine that distinguishing melodies requires hearing their pitches and their timing. Someone whose timing perception works could still struggle because the pitch perception doesn't. The results therefore don't show that timing contributes nothing; they show that an intact timing ability isn't enough to eliminate these volunteers' difficulty.
- E
Nothing compares learned abilities with abilities people are born with. The experiment tests what the volunteers can perceive, not how they acquired those abilities. We can't infer that timing is learned or pitch perception innate merely from one ability remaining intact while the other is impaired.
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