Speed and Accuracy of Absolute Pitch Judgments: Some Latter‐day Results

Abstract

Nine subjects, 5 of whom claimed absolute pitch (AP) ability (4 from childhood, 1 by self‐training) were given a pitch judgment task in which they had to strike notes on the piano as rapidly as possible to match randomized tape‐recorded piano notes. Stimulus set sizes were 64, 16, or 4 consecutive semitones, or 7 diatonic notes of a designated octave. A control task involved motor movements to notes announced in advance, with the effect that set size was 1. Accuracy, measured on the basis of deviations of responses from targets, significantly differentiated AP from NAP (non‐AP) subjects at all set sizes except the control task. For both groups, accuracy increased as set size decreased. Decision times, measured as that part of total response time before a movement to the response note began, decreased as set size decreased, but did not differentiate AP and NAP subjects. The performance of the trained AP subject was not distinguishable from that of the remaining AP subjects either in accuracy or decision time. Results are discussed in terms of a two‐factor theory of AP ability whereby NAP subjects use only relative tone height as the basis of judgment but AP subjects also use standards of tone chroma stored in long‐term memory. The abnormally high channel capacities and rates of information gain for AP subjects are interpreted on the basis of transmission of information in two channels, whereas NAP subjects transmit information in only one channel.

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

“…The advantage of white over black key pitches also replicates findings from other studies using a variety of paradigms (Sergeant, 1969;Carroll, 1975;Miyazaki, 1988Miyazaki, , 1989Miyazaki, , 1990Hulse, 1991, 1993;Simpson and Huron, 1994;Marvin and Brinkman, 2000;Vanzella and Schellenberg, 2010;Athos et al, 2007;Bermudez and Zatorre, 2009;Miyazaki et al, 2012). As described earlier, the present black/white key effect cannot be attributed to early training on the piano, since a larger effect was found for orchestral performers than for pianists.…”

“…In general, pitches corresponding to white keys on the keyboard (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) have been identified with greater accuracy and speed than those corresponding to black keys (C#/Db, D#/Eb, F#/Gb, G#/Ab, A#/Bb) (Sergeant, 1969;Carroll, 1975;Miyazaki, 1988Miyazaki, , 1989Miyazaki, , 1990Hulse, 1991, 1993;Simpson and Huron, 1994;Marvin and Brinkman, 2000;Vanzella and Schellenberg, 2010;Athos et al, 2007;Bermudez and Zatorre, 2009;Miyazaki et al, 2012). Two main explanations for this effect have been advanced.…”

Is it impossible to acquire absolute pitch in adulthood?

“…In the 6 participants who successfully acquired AP during training, their average correct response time during their last attempted level at which they passed the training was 2061.2ms, SD = 270.1. In the papers that reported correct response time for a pitch naming task with realword 'AP possessors', the correct response time ranged from 1216ms to 1662ms (Carroll, 1975;Miyazaki, 1989Miyazaki, , 1990Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993). It is important to note that all these papers explicitly requested participants to respond as quickly as possible, while we instructed our participants that speedy response was not important as long as it was made within the 5s response time window.…”

Absolute Pitch, Speech, and Tone Language: Some Experiments and a Proposed Framework

“…Although absolute pitch is particularly prevalent among highly accomplished musicians, it is not necessarily accompanied by superior performance on other musical processing tasks. For example, absolute pitch possessors often make octave errors in assigning names to notes, particularly when different musical instruments are involved, and they do not necessarily outperform others in making judgments of octave register (Bachem, 1937;Carroll, 1975;Lockhead & Byrd, 1981;Miyazaki, 1988Miyazaki, , 1989Rakowski & Morawska-Büngeler, 1987;Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993). Furthermore, absolute pitch possessors do not necessarily outperform others in making judgments of musical interval (Burns & Campbell, 1994;Miyazaki, 1992Miyazaki, , 1993, or on tasks involving short-term memory for pitch for which verbal labels cannot be employed as cues (Bachem, 1954;Rakowski, 1972;Rakowski & Morawska-Büngeler, 1987;Siegel, 1974).…”