Absolute pitch among students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music: A large-scale direct-test study

Deutsch, Diana; Li, Xiaonuo; Shen, Jiang

doi:10.1121/1.4824450

Cited by 12 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Such individuals possess the rare ability called absolute (or perfect) pitch (AP), which is defined as the ability to identify the chroma (pitch class) of a tone or to produce a specific pitch without the aid of any reference tones (Levitin & Rogers, 2005;Zatorre, 2003;Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993;Baggaley, 1974). This rare ability occurs in less than 1% of the general population (Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993), whereby Asian people speaking tonal languages have a higher incidence rate of AP (Deutsch, Li, & Shen, 2013;Deutsch, Dooley, Henthorn, & Head, 2009;Deutsch, Henthorn, Marvin, & Xu, 2006;Deutsch, Henthorn, & Dolson, 2004a;Gregersen, Kowalsky, Kohn, & Marvin, 1999). Interestingly, whereas most of the AP possessors are musicians (Deutsch et al, 2009), a handful of them possess AP in terms of a savant skill in the context of autism (Brenton, Devries, Barton, Minnich, & Sokol, 2008;Heaton, Davis, & Happé, 2008) or Williams syndrome (Lenhoff, Perales, & Hickok, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute Pitch: Evidence for Early Cognitive Facilitation during Passive Listening as Revealed by Reduced P3a Amplitudes

Rogenmoser

Elmer

Jäncke

2015

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to identify or produce different pitches without using reference tones. At least two sequential processing stages are assumed to contribute to this phenomenon. The first recruits a pitch memory mechanism at an early stage of auditory processing, whereas the second is driven more by a later cognitive mechanism (pitch labeling). Several investigations have used active tasks, but it is unclear how these two mechanisms contribute to AP during passive listening. The present work investigated the temporal dynamics of tone processing in AP and non-AP (NAP)participants, using EEG. We applied a passive oddball paradigm with between-and within-tone category manipulations and analyzed the MMN reflecting the early stage of auditory processing and, for the first time, the P3a response reflecting the later cognitive mechanism during the second processing stage. Results did not reveal between-group differences in MMN waveforms. But, the P3a response was specifically associated with AP and sensitive to processing different pitch types. Specifically, AP participants exhibited smaller P3a amplitudes, especially in between-tone category conditions, and P3a responses correlated significantly with the age of commencement of musical training, suggesting an influence of early musical exposure on AP. Our results reinforce the current opinion that the representation of pitches at the processing level of the auditory-related cortex is similar among AP and NAP participants, whereas the later processing stage is critical for AP. Results are interpreted as reflecting cognitive facilitation in AP participants, possibly driven by the availability of multiple codes for tones. Abstract ■ Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to identify or produce different pitches without using reference tones. At least two sequential processing stages are assumed to contribute to this phenomenon. The first recruits a pitch memory mechanism at an early stage of auditory processing, whereas the second is driven by a later cognitive mechanism (pitch labeling). Several investigations have used active tasks, but it is unclear how these two mechanisms contribute to AP during passive listening. The present work investigated the temporal dynamics of tone processing in AP and non-AP (NAP) participants by using EEG. We applied a passive oddball paradigm with between-and withintone category manipulations and analyzed the MMN reflecting the early stage of auditory processing and the P3a response reflecting the later cognitive mechanism during the second processing stage. Results did not reveal between-group differences in MMN waveforms. By contrast, the P3a response was specifically associated with AP and sensitive to the processing of different pitch types. Specifically, AP participants exhibited smaller P3a amplitudes, especially in between-tone category conditions, and P3a responses correlated significantly with the age of commencement of musical training, suggesting an influence of early musical exposure on AP. Our ...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute Pitch: Evidence for Early Cognitive Facilitation during Passive Listening as Revealed by Reduced P3a Amplitudes

Rogenmoser

Elmer

Jäncke

2015

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…One strength of the present experiment is that AP performance was assessed with three separate tests. Two of these tests -the UCSF Test and the UCSD Test -have been externally administered in a number of previous studies 17, [27][28][29][30][31] , which makes their interpretation (i.e. in terms of AP thresholds) more straightforward.…”

Section: Comparisons With External Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute pitch can be learned by some adults

Hedger

Heald

Nusbaum

2018

Preprint

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Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to name any musical note without the aid of a reference note, is thought to develop in an early critical period of development. Although recent research has shown that adults can improve AP abilities in a single training session, the best learners still did not achieve note classification performance comparable to performance of a genuine AP possessor. Here, we demonstrate that genuine AP levels of performance can be trained in eight weeks for some adults, with the best learner passing all measures of AP ability after training and retaining this knowledge for at least four months after training. Alternative explanations of these positive results, such as improving accuracy through adopting a slower, relative pitch strategy, are not supported based on joint analyses of response time and accuracy. The post-training AP assessments were extensive, totaling 204 notes taken from eight different timbres and spanning over seven octaves. These results clearly demonstrate that explicit perceptual training in some adults can lead to AP performance that is behaviorally indistinguishable from AP that results from childhood development. Implications for theories of AP acquisition are discussed.

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“…Finally, the third hypothesis considers the musical training regime and/or environment. For example, it has been shown that the prevalence of AP can be higher among musicians who speak tonal languages in comparison to non-tonal language speakers (Deutsch et al, 2006 , 2009 , 2013 ). In this case, the cognitive demand to extract meaning from similar sounds with varied intonations would extrapolate to other tasks, and therefore, contribute to pitch recognition and naming.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this case, the cognitive demand to extract meaning from similar sounds with varied intonations would extrapolate to other tasks, and therefore, contribute to pitch recognition and naming. However, early music education policies in Asian countries may also contribute to the differences in the observed prevalence (Miyazaki and Ogawa, 2006 ; Miyazaki et al, 2012 ), as music education methods (i.e., “fixed-do” vs. “moveable-do”) and the type of instrument used in learning classes (Miyazaki et al, 2012 ; Deutsch et al, 2013 ). In this respect, at least to our knowledge, few studies have attempted to investigate the influence of music proficiency in the expression of AP, which may have been overlooked in previous reports.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach allowed the identification of AP possessors whose performance surpassed chance. For comparison purposes, we also included a sub maximal threshold used in previous reports (Deutsch et al, 2006 , 2009 , 2013 ). Finally, we analyze and present our results in light of aforementioned hypothesis—characterizing our sample according to (1) the age of onset of musical training and formal musical education, (2) musical instrument, and (3) musical proficiency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Music Proficiency and Quantification of Absolute Pitch: A Large-Scale Study among Brazilian Musicians

2016

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Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify and name the pitch of a sound without external reference. Often, accuracy and speed at naming isolated musical pitches are correlated with demographic, biological, and acoustical parameters to gain insight into the genesis and evolution of this ability in specific cohorts. However, the majority of those studies were conducted in North America, Europe, or Asia. To fill this gap, here we investigated the pitch-naming performance in a large population of Brazilian conservatory musicians (N = 200). As previously shown, we found that the population performance was rather a continuum than an “all-or-none” ability. By comparing the observed distribution of correct responses to a theoretical binomial distribution, we estimated the prevalence of AP as being 18% amongst regular music students. High accuracy thresholds (e.g., 85% of correct responses) yielded a prevalence of 4%, suggesting that AP might have been underestimated in previous reports. Irrespective of the threshold used, AP prevalence was higher in musicians who started their musical practice and formal musical education early in life. Finally, we compared the performance of those music students (average proficiency group) with another group of students selected to take part in the conservatory orchestra (high proficiency group, N = 30). Interestingly, the prevalence of AP was higher in the latter in comparison to the former group. In addition, even when the response was incorrect, the mean absolute deviation from the correct response was smaller in the high proficiency group compared to the average proficiency group (Glass's Δ: 0.5). Taken together, our results show that the prevalence of AP in Brazilian students is similar to other non-tonal language populations, although this measure is highly dependent on the scoring threshold used. Despite corroborating that early involvement with musical practice and formal education can foster AP ability, the present data suggest that music proficiency may also play an important role in AP expression.

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Absolute pitch among students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music: A large-scale direct-test study

Cited by 12 publications

References 31 publications

Absolute Pitch: Evidence for Early Cognitive Facilitation during Passive Listening as Revealed by Reduced P3a Amplitudes

Absolute Pitch: Evidence for Early Cognitive Facilitation during Passive Listening as Revealed by Reduced P3a Amplitudes

Absolute pitch can be learned by some adults

Music Proficiency and Quantification of Absolute Pitch: A Large-Scale Study among Brazilian Musicians

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