Measurement of Absolute Pitch

Baggaley, Jon

doi:10.1177/030573567422002

Cited by 36 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The participants in the present investigation had not undergone musical training and did not possess pitch labels. However, the paradigm used in this study provided retrieval cues, thereby allowing individuals without AP as currently defined (Baggaley, 1974;Levitin, 1994) to demonstrate the existence of stable representations for specific musical tones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Heaton

2003

Child Psychology Psychiatry

233

183

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Background: Autistic musical savants invariably possess absolute pitch ability and are able to disembed individual musical tones from chords. Enhanced pitch discrimination and memory has been found in non‐savant individuals with autism who also show superior performance on visual disembedding tasks. These experiments investigate the extent that enhanced disembedding ability will be found within the musical domain in autism. Method: High‐functioning children with autism, together with age‐ and intelligence‐matched controls, participated in three experiments testing pitch memory, labelling and chord disembedding. Results: The findings from experiment 1 showed enhanced pitch memory and labelling in the autism group. In experiment 2, when subjects were pre‐exposed to labelled individual tones, superior chord segmentation was also found. However, in experiment 3, when disembedding performance was less reliant on pitch memory, no group differences emerged and the children with autism, like controls, perceived musical chords holistically. Conclusion: These findings indicate that pitch memory and labelling is superior in autism and can facilitate performance on musical disembedding tasks. However, when task performance does not rely on long‐term pitch memory, autistic children, like controls, succumb to the Gestalt qualities of chords.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Heaton

2003

Child Psychology Psychiatry

233

183

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“…By definition, AP is the ability to produce or identify specific pitches without reference to an external standard (Baggaley, 1974). AP possessors have internalized their pitch references, This research was supported by NSF Research Grant BNS 85-11685 to R. N. Shepard, by ONR Grant N-00014-89-J-3186 to the author, while the author held a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and by ONR Grant N-00014-89-3013 to M. I. Posner.…”

Section: Danielj Levitinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies

Levitin

1994

Perception & Psychophysics

285

305

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Evidence for the absolute nature of long-term auditory memory is provided by analyzing the production of familiar melodies, Additionally, a two-component theory of absolute pitch is presented, in which this rare ability is conceived as consisting of a more common ability, pitch memory, and a separate, less common ability, pitch labeling. Forty-six subjects sang two different popular songs, and their productions were compared with the actual pitches used in recordings of those songs. Forty percent of the subjects sang the correct pitch on at least one trial; 12% of the subjects hit the correct pitch on both trials, and 44%came within two semitones of the correct pitch on both trials. The results show a convergence with previous studies on the stability of auditory imagery and latent absolute pitch ability; the results further suggest that individuals might possess representations of pitch that are more stable and accurate than previously recognized.There is an interesting history of debate in the animallearning literature about whether animals' internal representations are relational or absolute (

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“…Most interestingly, there are only a few humans who are able to categorize pitches effortlessly. 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).…”

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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Measurement of Absolute Pitch

Cited by 36 publications

References 7 publications

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies

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

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