Abstract

Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to name any musical note without the aid of a reference note, is thought to depend on an early critical period of development. Although recent research has shown that adults can improve AP performance in a single training session, the best learners still did not achieve note classification levels comparable to performance of a typical, “genuine” AP possessor. Here, we demonstrate that these “genuine” levels of AP performance can be achieved within eight weeks of training for at least 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 results also did not appear to be driven by extreme familiarity with a single instrument or octave range, as the post-training AP assessments used eight different timbres and spanned over seven octaves. Yet, it is also important to note that a majority of the participants only exhibited modest improvements in performance, suggesting that adult AP learning is difficult and that near-perfect levels of AP may only be achievable by subset of adults. Overall, these results demonstrate that explicit perceptual training in some adults can lead to AP performance that is behaviorally indistinguishable from AP that manifests within a critical period of development. Implications for theories of AP acquisition are discussed.

Highlights

  • Absolute pitch (AP), called “perfect pitch”, is the rare ability to name any musical note without the aid of a reference note [1,2,3]

  • In an auditory digit span (ADS) task, participants correctly recalled an average of 8.83 (SE: 0.65) spoken digits, which was between the range of non-AP musical controls (8.1) and genuine AP possessors (10.0) previously reported [29]

  • The present results challenge two theoretical assumptions regarding AP–(1) that it is a dichotomous, “all or none” ability [21], and (2) that genuine AP patterns of performance cannot emerge in post-critical-period adults [1]

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Summary

Introduction

Absolute pitch (AP), called “perfect pitch”, is the rare ability to name any musical note without the aid of a reference note [1,2,3]. The most widely accepted theory is that “genuine” AP ability can only be developed as a result of an early critical period of learning (the critical period theory) [4,5]. This critical period theory of AP is bolstered in large part by the lack of conclusive evidence that AP can be learned by any post-critical-period adults, resting on null findings [6,7,8,9]. A training study provided proof-of-concept demonstration of critical periods in AP by demonstrating that critical period for learning AP could be “re-opened” for adults via a pharmacological intervention

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