Sensory cues in pitch judgment.

Brammer, Lawrence M.

doi:10.1037/h0058974

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The second was that greater familiarity with a timbre could make pitch identification easier. In line with this view, when violinists with AP are asked to tune a tone to concert A, performance is better for violin tones than for clarinet tones [42].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…We predict that compared to their counterparts trained on instruments without fixed pitches, these participants should exhibit enhanced note-naming ability regardless of the test timbre. Although familiarity with a particular instrument is implicated in previous findings of an advantage for violin over clarinet tones among violinists [42], the advantage may be restricted to comparisons between two variable-pitch instruments or to the particular task, which involved tuning the pitch of a tone to concert A.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Absolute Pitch: Effects of Timbre on Note-Naming Ability

Vanzella

Schellenberg

2010

PLoS ONE

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BackgroundAbsolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce isolated musical tones. It is evident primarily among individuals who started music lessons in early childhood. Because AP requires memory for specific pitches as well as learned associations with verbal labels (i.e., note names), it represents a unique opportunity to study interactions in memory between linguistic and nonlinguistic information. One untested hypothesis is that the pitch of voices may be difficult for AP possessors to identify. A musician's first instrument may also affect performance and extend the sensitive period for acquiring accurate AP.Methods/Principal FindingsA large sample of AP possessors was recruited on-line. Participants were required to identity test tones presented in four different timbres: piano, pure tone, natural (sung) voice, and synthesized voice. Note-naming accuracy was better for non-vocal (piano and pure tones) than for vocal (natural and synthesized voices) test tones. This difference could not be attributed solely to vibrato (pitch variation), which was more pronounced in the natural voice than in the synthesized voice. Although starting music lessons by age 7 was associated with enhanced note-naming accuracy, equivalent abilities were evident among listeners who started music lessons on piano at a later age.Conclusions/SignificanceBecause the human voice is inextricably linked to language and meaning, it may be processed automatically by voice-specific mechanisms that interfere with note naming among AP possessors. Lessons on piano or other fixed-pitch instruments appear to enhance AP abilities and to extend the sensitive period for exposure to music in order to develop accurate AP.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute Pitch: Effects of Timbre on Note-Naming Ability

Vanzella

Schellenberg

2010

PLoS ONE

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“…AP possessors tend to be more accurate in identifying notes played by their primary instrument (Brammer, 1951;Sergeant, 1969), and most are more accurate at identifying pitches played on the piano than other instruments (Lockhead & Byrd, 1981;Marvin & Brinkman, 2000), possibly due to greater familiarity with that instrument. They also tend to be worse at identifying the pitch of vocal tones than other instruments (Vanzella & Schellenberg, 2010), an effect that may be related to the vocal generosity effect (Hutchins, Roquet, & Peretz, 2012), in which all listeners tend to be worse at determining the tuning of vocal pitches.…”

Section: T He Act Of Imitating a Vocal Pitch Whilementioning

confidence: 94%

Symbolic and Motor Contributions to Vocal Imitation in Absolute Pitch

Hutka

Moreno

2015

Music Perception

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THE LINKED DUAL REPRESENTATION MODEL (Hutchins & Moreno, 2013) was designed to provide an account for the broad pattern of relationships between vocal perception and production, including both correlations and dissociations between the two. This model makes a unique prediction that musicians with absolute pitch (AP) should be biased towards compensating for objectively mistuned notes in a single note imitation task. In this paper, we tested this prediction by asking musicians with and without AP to imitate vocal notes that are either well-tuned or mistuned. We found that AP musicians were more likely to bias their responses to compensate for mistunings, and that this effect was stronger after longer response delays. We also showed evidence for some implicit AP-like abilities among non-AP musicians. Our findings were predicted by the Linked Dual Representation model, but not other models, providing further evidence for this model.

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“…This suggests that timbral cues are meaningful sources of acoustic variability that have become tied to note representations for AP possessors through experience. In other words, an individual's expertise with a particular timbre seems to affect the strength of AP note categories, such that frequently heard timbres can be more quickly and more accurately identified than less frequently heard (or completely novel) timbres (e.g., Brammer, 1951).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of acoustic variability on absolute pitch categorization: Evidence of contextual tuning

Hedger

Heald

Nusbaum

2015

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Absolute pitch (AP) is defined as the ability to label a musical note without the aid of a reference note. Despite the large amounts of acoustic variability encountered in music, AP listeners generally experience perceptual constancy for different exemplars within note categories (e.g., recognizing that a C played on a tuba belongs to the same category as a C played on a piccolo). The present studies investigate whether AP possessors are sensitive to context variability along acoustic dimensions that are not inherently linked to the typical definition of a note category. In a speeded target recognition task, AP participants heard a sequence of notes and pressed a button whenever they heard a designated target note. Within a trial the sequence of notes was either blocked according to note-irrelevant variation or contained a mix of different instruments (Experiment 1), amplitude levels (Experiment 2), or octaves (Experiment 3). Compared to the blocked trials, participants were significantly slower to respond in the mixed-instrument and mixed-octave trials, but not the mixed-amplitude trials. Importantly, this performance difference could not be solely attributed to initial performance differences between instruments, amplitudes, or octaves. These results suggest that AP note identification is contextually sensitive.

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Sensory cues in pitch judgment.

Cited by 14 publications

References 17 publications

Absolute Pitch: Effects of Timbre on Note-Naming Ability

Absolute Pitch: Effects of Timbre on Note-Naming Ability

Symbolic and Motor Contributions to Vocal Imitation in Absolute Pitch

The effects of acoustic variability on absolute pitch categorization: Evidence of contextual tuning

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