- PowerScore Staff
- Posts: 1187
- Joined: Oct 19, 2022
- Mon Oct 13, 2025 5:12 pm
#121822
Hi divinesweater,
You're correct that:
diseases/conditions/illnesses are not caused by their symptoms. Ie. A cold does not result from me coughing. A cold results in me coughing.
However, the relationship given in the stimulus is not quite parallel to the one that you've provided. Amusia is defined in the stimulus as "difficulty telling different melodies apart and remembering simple tunes." In other words, amusia (more commonly known as "tone deafness") is a description of a condition. Amusia would be the equivalent of coughing rather than a cold in your analogy, and the experiment described in the stimulus was designed to test what causes amusia.
According to a quick Internet search (since I'm not a music expert), "a melody is made up of both pitch (the highness or lowness of a note) and rhythm (the pattern of long and short notes)." This was not explicitly stated in the stimulus, so perhaps the test makers assumed that this is either common knowledge or at least could be ascertained from the information that is provided in the stimulus.
This basically means that having difficulty telling different melodies apart (i.e. amusia) may be caused by a failure to recognize pitch or rhythm (or both). Because these volunteers were unable to recognize changes in pitch (i.e. tone), but were able to track changes in timing (i.e. rhythm), the stimulus supports Answer B that failure to discern pitch plays more of a role in causing amusia than failure to discern timing. In other words, a failure to discern pitch is more likely the cause of the broader condition of difficulty telling different melodies apart (i.e. amusia) rather than a symptom of amusia.
Admittedly, a failure to discern pitch isn't a very satisfying explanation for what causes amusia and naturally raises the question, "What caused the failure to discern pitch?" Apparently, "amusia can be congenital (present from birth) or acquired due to brain damage or other neurological disorders." Of course, none of this information is needed to answer the question, and these causes can be thought of as the underlying causes of the failure to discern pitch, which in turn causes the difficulty telling different melodies apart.
You're correct that:
diseases/conditions/illnesses are not caused by their symptoms. Ie. A cold does not result from me coughing. A cold results in me coughing.
However, the relationship given in the stimulus is not quite parallel to the one that you've provided. Amusia is defined in the stimulus as "difficulty telling different melodies apart and remembering simple tunes." In other words, amusia (more commonly known as "tone deafness") is a description of a condition. Amusia would be the equivalent of coughing rather than a cold in your analogy, and the experiment described in the stimulus was designed to test what causes amusia.
According to a quick Internet search (since I'm not a music expert), "a melody is made up of both pitch (the highness or lowness of a note) and rhythm (the pattern of long and short notes)." This was not explicitly stated in the stimulus, so perhaps the test makers assumed that this is either common knowledge or at least could be ascertained from the information that is provided in the stimulus.
This basically means that having difficulty telling different melodies apart (i.e. amusia) may be caused by a failure to recognize pitch or rhythm (or both). Because these volunteers were unable to recognize changes in pitch (i.e. tone), but were able to track changes in timing (i.e. rhythm), the stimulus supports Answer B that failure to discern pitch plays more of a role in causing amusia than failure to discern timing. In other words, a failure to discern pitch is more likely the cause of the broader condition of difficulty telling different melodies apart (i.e. amusia) rather than a symptom of amusia.
Admittedly, a failure to discern pitch isn't a very satisfying explanation for what causes amusia and naturally raises the question, "What caused the failure to discern pitch?" Apparently, "amusia can be congenital (present from birth) or acquired due to brain damage or other neurological disorders." Of course, none of this information is needed to answer the question, and these causes can be thought of as the underlying causes of the failure to discern pitch, which in turn causes the difficulty telling different melodies apart.