Absolute pitch among students in an American music conservatory: Association with tone language fluency.

Abstract

Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to name a musical note in the absence of a reference note, is extremely rare in the United States and Europe, and its genesis is unclear. The prevalence of AP was examined among students in an American music conservatory, as a function of age of onset of musical training, ethnicity, and fluency in speaking a tone language. Taking those of East Asian ethnicity, the performance level on a test of AP was significantly higher among those who spoke a tone language very fluently than among those who spoke a tone language fairly fluently, which was in turn higher than among those who were not fluent in speaking a tone language. The performance level of this last group did not differ significantly from that of Caucasian students who spoke only intonation language. An advantage to early onset of musical training was found, but did not interact with the effect of language. Further analyses showed that the results could not be explained by country of early music education. The findings support the hypothesis that the acquisition of AP by tone language speakers involves the same process as occurs in the acquisition of a second tone language.

Absolute pitch correlates with high performance on interval naming tasks

“…One issue that arises concerns the ethnic and linguistic backgrounds of the subjects because persons of East Asian descent and those who are speakers of tone language are more likely to be AP possessors than are those who are Caucasian and who speak non-tone languages (Deutsch et al, 2006(Deutsch et al, , 2009Gregersen et al, 1999Gregersen et al, , 2000Lee and Lee, 2010). Considering ethnicity, 13 of the AP possessors were of East Asian descent, and 5 were Caucasian.…”

“…Although outside the scope of this article, a number of potential factors have been identified, including tone language fluency (Deutsch et al, 2006(Deutsch et al, , 2009, physiological differences (Keenan et al, 2001;Loui et al, 2010;Schlaug et al, 1995;Schulze et al, 2009), genetics (Theusch et al, 2009), and early music education (Miyazaki and Ogawa, 2006); indeed, it appears that the potential for developing AP is present in infancy (Saffran and Griepentrog, 2001).…”

“…As Miyazaki and Rakowski (2002) have pointed out, any musical advantage that may be enjoyed by AP possessors could be due to early onset of musical training or long duration of musical training (see also Deutsch et al, 2006Deutsch et al, , 2009. Any study examining differences between possessors and non-possessors of AP should therefore control for these factors.…”

“…They were first given the test for AP that had been employed in the studies by Deutsch et al (2006Deutsch et al ( , 2009 and Dooley and Deutsch (2010). This test consisted of successive presentations of the 36 tones spanning three octaves from C 3 (131 Hz) to B 5 (988 Hz), and subjects were asked to write down the name of each note (C, F#, E; and so on) after they heard it.…”

Collaborative and Self-directed Learning Strategies to Promote Fluent EFL Speakers

“…Various authors (such as Deutsch, Dooley, Henthorn, & Head, 2009;Dustmann & van Soest, 2001;Hunter, 2012;Nation, 1989) have discussed how to improve oral fluency in a foreign language. Likewise, with regard to foreign language educators' frequent concerns that students are not able to produce oral speech in the additional language that sounds natural and fluent, Hunter (2012, p. 30) …”