Congenital Amusia Among Young Adolescents in Kuching, Sarawak
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UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK
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Congenital amusia is a lifelong neurogenetic deficit characterized by the impairment of music processing. This musical disorder was commonly known as tone-deafness in the western culture. The lack of this core musical system in the human brain concerns ~4% of the general population according to a single test study from 1980. A study in 2017 based on a larger sample population, however, presents a prevalence of congenital amusia of 1.5%. The purpose of this study was aimed to investigate the occurrence of congenital amusia among young adolescents aged 13 and 14 years in Kuching, Sarawak. The results contribute new knowledge on possible musical disorder among young adolescents across different ethnicities. On the basis of a test instrument, known as the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), and a self-assessment questionnaire, the study compared the prevalence of congenital amusia between both age groups as well as tonal language, Chinese, and nontonal languages namely, Malay, English, Iban and Bidayuh. The impact on the types of first languages was also studied based on the aforementioned five languages. The predictors of the MBEA test scores were also established using a set of questionnaire measuring musical experience, musical habits and musical difficulties performed on a Likert scale. The results presented a 3% prevalence of congenital amusia among this group of 500 participants with young adolescents, aged 13 years old, commanding a higher proportion of 2.2%. A statistically significant difference was seen in the comparison of the tonal Chinese language and the non-tonal English and Iban language groups. The analysis of the first languages projected a significant difference in the Iban, Bidayuh and Chinese languages. The variables in the three predictors were analysed with factor loadings and regressed with the participants’ test scores. Results indicate that musical habits accounted for a higher weightage as the most iv significant predictor of the MBEA scores, followed by musical difficulties and musical experience. Hence, the findings served as a basis for comparison with further studies across ethnic groups and possibly as a potential intervention to compensate musical difficulties during the earlier stage of adolescence.