Pitch Identification Research Articles

Superior pitch identification ability is associated with better executive functions.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Decades of research have shown that individuals vary greatly in their ability to identify musical notes. On one extreme are individuals with absolute pitch (AP), who can label or identify individual musical notes with high accuracy and fast speed without the benefit of an external reference (Levitin, 1999; Parncutt & Levitin, 2001). Researchers have examined several factors that have potential influence on AP, including cognitive (e.g., memory), environmental (e.g., early musical training before or during a critical period of auditory development), and genetic factors (Chin, 2003; Drayna, Manichaikul, DeLange, Snieder, & Spector, 2001; Theusch, Basu, & Gitschier, 2009; Zatorre, 2003).In terms of cognitive functions, some studies have shown that AP musicians tend to perform better than non-AP musicians on select cognitive tasks. For example, Zatorre and Beckett (1989) found that AP musicians performed significantly better than non-AP musicians in delayed recall of note names with verbal or tonal interference. Studies have also shown that AP musicians have better long-term pitch memory than non-AP musicians (Levitin, 1999; Levitin & Rogers, 2005; Parncutt & Levitin, 2001). Recently, Hsieh and Saberi (2008) found that AP musicians were more likely than non-AP musicians to use strategies of semantic associative memory, such as linguistic, emotional, or spatial representations, to perform a pitch matching task. Interestingly, however, AP and non-AP musicians did not differ significantly in vocal pitch reproduction of isolated, randomly selected musical notes, perhaps because the pitch memory for vocal reproduction was accessible to both groups through procedural memory, rather than semantic memory (Hsieh & Saberi, 2008). Similarly, Benassi-Werke, Queiroz, Araujo, Bueno, and Oliveira (2012) found that AP musicians and professional musicians had a general advantage over amateur musicians in their memory span of tones, but not that of digits or pseudowords.AP musicians' advantage in selected cognitive functions has also been supported by brain imaging evidence. For example, structural neuroimaging studies showed that, compared with non-AP musicians and normal controls, AP musicians showed greater left cerebral asymmetry in the planum temporale (an area implicated in long-term pitch representation; Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001; Schlaug, Jancke, Huang, & Steinmetz, 1995; Wilson, Lusher, Wan, Dudgeon, & Reutens, 2009). Moreover, the white matter of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, which connects the temporal lobe for auditory processing with the frontal lobes for executive functions such as working memory (WM) and attention, was also larger in AP musicians than in non-AP musicians (Hagmann et al., 2006; Oechslin, Imfeld, Loenneker, Meyer, & Jancke, 2010). In sum, previous research has generally shown that AP is associated with selected cognitive functions as well as relevant brain functions and structures.Although previous research has focused on AP among musicians, recent research has shown that pitch identification (PI) ability is likely to be distributed on a continuum, with AP at its extreme upper end. According to Deutsch, Moore, and Dolson (1986), AP is a complex faculty that may exist in partial form. Indeed, AP has been divided into several subtypes, such as AP-1, -2, -3, and -4(Baharloo, Johnston, Service, Gitschier, & Freimer, 1998); high-AP, middle-AP, and low-AP (Itoh, Suwazono, Arao, Miyazaki, & Nakada, 2005); and weak AP or quasi- or pseudo-AP (Bermudez & Zatorre, 2009; Levitin, 2008; Miyazaki, 1989). To better understand the cognitive mechanisms involved in AP or PI in general, it would be informative to study nonmusicians. Thus far, only three studies have tried to assess AP or PI ability among nonmusicians. Ross, Olson, Marks, and Gore (2004) designed a nonmusical paradigm to identify AP possessors among nonmusicians. …

Musical Activity Tunes Up Absolute Pitch Ability

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce pitches of musical tones without an external reference. Active AP (i.e., pitch production or pitch adjustment) and passive AP (i.e., pitch identification) are considered to not necessarily coincide, although no study has properly compared these abilities. Using a novel computerized pitch adjustment test, we investigated active AP ability in musicians with and without AP (ages 18-43). We found a significant correlation between active and passive AP indicating that AP possessors (APs) identify and produce pitch equally well. Furthermore, we found that APs generally undershoot when adjusting musical pitch, a tendency that decreases when musical activity increases. Finally, APs are less accurate when adjusting the pitch to black key targets than to white key targets. Hence, AP ability may be partly practice-dependent and we speculate that APs may benefit from frequent contact with fixed standard chroma to keep in tune.

Effective connectivity associated with auditory error detection in musicians with absolute pitch

It is advantageous to study a wide range of vocal abilities in order to fully understand how vocal control measures vary across the full spectrum. Individuals with absolute pitch (AP) are able to assign a verbal label to musical notes and have enhanced abilities in pitch identification without reliance on an external referent. In this study we used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to model effective connectivity of ERP responses to pitch perturbation in voice auditory feedback in musicians with relative pitch (RP), AP, and non-musician controls. We identified a network compromising left and right hemisphere superior temporal gyrus (STG), primary motor cortex (M1), and premotor cortex (PM). We specified nine models and compared two main factors examining various combinations of STG involvement in feedback pitch error detection/correction process. Our results suggest that modulation of left to right STG connections are important in the identification of self-voice error and sensory motor integration in AP musicians. We also identify reduced connectivity of left hemisphere PM to STG connections in AP and RP groups during the error detection and corrections process relative to non-musicians. We suggest that this suppression may allow for enhanced connectivity relating to pitch identification in the right hemisphere in those with more precise pitch matching abilities. Musicians with enhanced pitch identification abilities likely have an improved auditory error detection and correction system involving connectivity of STG regions. Our findings here also suggest that individuals with AP are more adept at using feedback related to pitch from the right hemisphere.

Relationship Between Cortical Thickness and Functional Activation in the Early Blind

Early blindness results in both structural and functional changes of the brain. However, these changes have rarely been studied in relation to each other. We measured alterations in cortical thickness (CT) caused by early visual deprivation and their relationship with cortical activity. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 12 early blind (EB) humans and 12 sighted controls (SC). Experimental conditions included one-back tasks for auditory localization and pitch identification, and a simple sound-detection task. Structural and functional data were analyzed in a whole-brain approach and within anatomically defined regions of interest in sensory areas of the spared (auditory) and deprived (visual) modalities. Functional activation during sound-localization or pitch-identification tasks correlated negatively with CT in occipital areas of EB (calcarine sulcus, lingual gyrus, superior and middle occipital gyri, and cuneus) and in nonprimary auditory areas of SC. These results suggest a link between CT and activation and demonstrate that the relationship between cortical structure and function may depend on early sensory experience, probably via selective pruning of exuberant connections. Activity-dependent effects of early sensory deprivation and long-term practice are superimposed on normal maturation and aging. Together these processes shape the relationship between brain structure and function over the lifespan.

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

This paper reports a large-scale direct-test study of absolute pitch (AP) in students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Overall note-naming scores were very high, with high scores correlating positively with early onset of musical training. Students who had begun training at age ≤5 yr scored 83% correct not allowing for semitone errors and 90% correct allowing for semitone errors. Performance levels were higher for white key pitches than for black key pitches. This effect was greater for orchestral performers than for pianists, indicating that it cannot be attributed to early training on the piano. Rather, accuracy in identifying notes of different names (C, C#, D, etc.) correlated with their frequency of occurrence in a large sample of music taken from the Western tonal repertoire. There was also an effect of pitch range, so that performance on tones in the two-octave range beginning on Middle C was higher than on tones in the octave below Middle C. In addition, semitone errors tended to be on the sharp side. The evidence also ran counter to the hypothesis, previously advanced by others, that the note A plays a special role in pitch identification judgments.

Target-Specific IPSC Kinetics Promote Temporal Processing in Auditory Parallel Pathways

The acoustic environment contains biologically relevant information on timescales from microseconds to tens of seconds. The auditory brainstem nuclei process this temporal information through parallel pathways that originate in the cochlear nucleus from different classes of cells. Although the roles of ion channels and excitatory synapses in temporal processing have been well studied, the contribution of inhibition is less well understood. Here, we show in CBA/CaJ mice that the two major projection neurons of the ventral cochlear nucleus, the bushy and T-stellate cells, receive glycinergic inhibition with different synaptic conductance time courses. Bushy cells, which provide precisely timed spike trains used in sound localization and pitch identification, receive slow inhibitory inputs. In contrast, T-stellate cells, which encode slower envelope information, receive inhibition that is eightfold faster. Both types of inhibition improved the precision of spike timing but engage different cellular mechanisms and operate on different timescales. Computer models reveal that slow IPSCs in bushy cells can improve spike timing on the scale of tens of microseconds. Although fast and slow IPSCs in T-stellate cells improve spike timing on the scale of milliseconds, only fast IPSCs can enhance the detection of narrowband acoustic signals in a complex background. Our results suggest that target-specific IPSC kinetics are critical for the segregated parallel processing of temporal information from the sensory environment.

Do Musicians with Perfect Pitch Have More Autism Traits than Musicians without Perfect Pitch? An Empirical Study

Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch (AP), refers to the rare ability to identify or produce a musical tone correctly without the benefit of an external reference. AP is often considered to reflect musical giftedness, but it has also been associated with certain disabilities due to increased prevalence of AP in individuals with sensory and developmental disorders. Here, we determine whether individual autistic traits are present in people with AP. We quantified subclinical levels of autism traits using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) in three matched groups of subjects: 16 musicians with AP (APs), 18 musicians without AP (non-APs), and 16 non-musicians. In addition, we measured AP ability by a pitch identification test with sine wave tones and piano tones. We found a significantly higher degree of autism traits in APs than in non-APs and non-musicians, and autism scores were significantly correlated with pitch identification scores (r = .46, p = .003). However, our results showed that APs did not differ from non-APs on diagnostically crucial social and communicative domain scores and their total AQ scores were well below clinical thresholds for autism. Group differences emerged on the imagination and attention switching subscales of the AQ. Thus, whilst these findings do link AP with autism, they also show that AP ability is most strongly associated with personality traits that vary widely within the normal population.

A Unique Asymmetrical Stroop Effect in Absolute Pitch Possessors

The Stroop task has been employed to study automaticity or failures of selective attention for many years. The effect is known to be asymmetrical, with words affecting color naming but not vice versa. In the current work two auditory-visual Stroop-like tasks were devised in order to study the automaticity of pitch processing in both absolute pitch (AP) possessors and musically trained controls without AP (nAP). In the tone naming task, participants were asked to name the auditory tone while ignoring a visual note name. In the note naming task, participants were asked to read a note name while ignoring the auditory tone. The nAP group showed a significant congruency effect only in the tone naming task, whereas AP possessors showed the reverse pattern, with a significant congruency effect only in the note reading task. Thus, AP possessors were unable to ignore the auditory tone when asked to read the note, but were unaffected by the verbal note name when asked to label the auditory tone. The results suggest that pitch identification in participants endowed with AP ability is automatic and impossible to suppress.

Impaired pitch identification as a potential marker for depression

BackgroundImpaired auditory performance has been considered as marker for depression. The present study tested whether pitch perception is affected in depression and whether the impairment is task-specific or reflects global dysfunction.MethodsTwelve depressive in-patients and 12 non-depressive participants, half of the sample women, volunteered. The participants performed pitch identification using a four-choice reaction task, pitch contour perception, and pitch discrimination.ResultsDuring pitch identification but not during pitch contour perception or pitch discrimination, depressive patients responded less accurate than non-depressive participants (F = 3.3, p = 0.047). An analysis of covariates revealed that only female but not male depressive patients identified pitches poorly (Z = −2.2, p = 0.025) and inaccurate pitch identification correlated with high scores in the Beck Depression Inventory in women (r = −0.8, p = 0.001) but not in men (r = −0.1, p = 0.745). Patients did not differ from controls in reaction time or responsiveness.ConclusionsImpaired pitch perception in depression is task-specific. Therefore, cognitive deficits in depression are circumscribed and not global. Reduced pitch identification in depression was associated with female sex. We suggest that impaired pitch identification merits attention as a potential marker for depression in women.

Relating binaural pitch perception to the individual listener’s auditory profile

The ability of eight normal-hearing listeners and fourteen listeners with sensorineural hearing loss to detect and identify pitch contours was measured for binaural-pitch stimuli and salience-matched monaurally detectable pitches. In an effort to determine whether impaired binaural pitch perception was linked to a specific deficit, the auditory profiles of the individual listeners were characterized using measures of loudness perception, cognitive ability, binaural processing, temporal fine structure processing, and frequency selectivity, in addition to common audiometric measures. Two of the listeners were found not to perceive binaural pitch at all, despite a clear detection of monaural pitch. While both binaural and monaural pitches were detectable by all other listeners, identification scores were significantly lower for binaural than for monaural pitch. A total absence of binaural pitch sensation coexisted with a loss of a binaural signal-detection advantage in noise, without implying reduced cognitive function. Auditory filter bandwidths did not correlate with the difference in pitch identification scores between binaural and monaural pitches. However, subjects with impaired binaural pitch perception showed deficits in temporal fine structure processing. Whether the observed deficits stemmed from peripheral or central mechanisms could not be resolved here, but the present findings may be useful for hearing loss characterization.

The correlation of inductive reasoning with multi-dimensional perception

Intelligence correlated with perception in previous studies. The aim of this investigation was to specify the relationship between inductive reasoning and perception. For this purpose, 125 healthy adults performed the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices as measure of inductive reasoning and six perception tasks. Inductive reasoning correlated with simultaneous perception of locus and pitch (r=.29, p<.001) and with perception of four distinct colors (r=.32, p<.001). Inductive reasoning was not significantly associated with pitch discrimination, pitch contour perception after partialing out effects of covariates, pitch identification, and visual localization. Inductive reasoning, locus-pitch perception, and color perception required the processing of unrelated categories. Therefore, inductive reasoning and the correlating perception skills may share multi-dimensional mental representation. This multi-dimensional representation may differ from one-dimensional scales such as pitch. The findings suggest a differentiation of pre-semantic cognitions and its interactions with perception.

Absolute pitch is correlated with high performance on relative pitch tasks.

Absolute pitch (AP)—the ability to name a musical note without a reference note—has been shown to be associated with an advantage in pitch identification tasks; however, its usefulness in contexts involving relative pitch has so far been unclear. To explore this issue, 36 trained musicians—18 AP possessors and 18 non-possessors with equivalent age of onset of musical training and duration of musical training—were tested on several different interval naming tasks requiring only relative pitch. AP possession was highly positively correlated with performance on these tasks; r=0.72, p less than 0.001. Furthermore, the advantage of AP possession in performing these tasks was not dependent on musical key, interval size, or musical context. These findings support the hypothesis that AP may be beneficial in performing musical tasks including those that primarily require the processing of relative pitch.

Numeric aspects in pitch identification: an fMRI study

BackgroundPitch identification had yielded unique response patterns compared to other auditory skills. Selecting one out of numerous pitches distinguished this task from detecting a pitch ascent. Encoding of numerous stimuli had activated the intraparietal sulcus in the visual domain. Therefore, we hypothesized that numerosity encoding during pitch identification activates the intraparietal sulcus as well.MethodsTo assess pitch identification, the participants had to recognize a single pitch from a set of four possible pitches in each trial. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) disentangled neural activation during this four-pitch-choice task from activation during pitch contour perception, tone localization, and pitch discrimination.ResultsPitch identification induced bilateral activation in the intraparietal sulcus compared to pitch discrimination. Correct responses in pitch identification correlated with activation in the left intraparietal sulcus. Pitch contour perception activated the superior temporal gyrus conceivably due to the larger range of presented tones. The differentiation between pitch identification and tone localization failed. Activation in an ACC-hippocampus network distinguished pitch discrimination from pitch identification.ConclusionPitch identification is distinguishable from pitch discrimination on the base of activation in the IPS. IPS activity during pitch identification may be the auditory counterpart of numerosity encoding in the visual domain.

Experimental investigation of elementary school children&apos;s absolute pitch identification ability : The identification ability of grade 3 to grade 6 students

Experimental investigation of elementary school children&apos;s absolute pitch identification ability : The identification ability of grade 3 to grade 6 students

Response tendency of pitch identification task in higher and lower pitch

Response tendency of pitch identification task in higher and lower pitch

Accuracy and encoding of absolute pitch: The effect of phonetic interference on absolute pitch identification

絶対音感は，外的な基準枠を与える音なしに音楽的音高を同定または産出できる能力と定義される．本研究は，絶対音感に関する二つのことを問題にした．一つは絶対音感保有者の音高の符号化方法であり，もう一つは絶対音感の正確度と符号化方法の関係である．実験では，音楽的音高を音声で発声させた刺激を使って絶対的な音高の知覚を干渉し，干渉された量を測ることで音声的符号化の程度を絶対音感水準別に調べた．その結果，音声に干渉されると，不正確な絶対音感保有者の判断の正確さは非保有者と同程度になった．一方，正確な絶対音感保有者は，音声干渉の影響を受けるものの，非保有者と同定度にはならなかった．このことは，不正確な絶対音感保有者が絶対的な音高の処理の基盤として音声的な符号化を主要な手段としているのに対し，正確な絶対音感保有者はその他の手がかりによる判断も行うことができることを示唆する．

Efficient analysis of Py-GC/MS data by a large scale automatic database approach: An illustration of white pitch identification in pulp and paper industry

Hyphenated techniques like Py-GC/MS (pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry) result often in complex chromatograms containing a high information density. Extracting meaningful information is difficult and time consuming. Especially with automatic sampling, data evaluation becomes a major bottleneck. An effective approach to automate the characterization of chromatograms is presented. The database approach consists basically of three steps: measuring reference substances to generate a database, measuring unknown or difficult samples and using the database for the identification of these samples. The compiled database contains a collection of mass spectra of pyrolysis products with data such as retention index and additional information from which reference substances the pyrolysis products may derive. The developed database approach has been tested on designed mixtures of compounds forming “white pitch”. “White pitch” is a typical type of deposit found in paper production processes deriving from chemicals used in coating processes.

Vowel Identity between Note Labels Confuses Pitch Identification in Non-Absolute Pitch Possessors

The simplest and likeliest assumption concerning the cognitive bases of absolute pitch (AP) is that at its origin there is a particularly skilled function which matches the height of the perceived pitch to the verbal label of the musical tone. Since there is no difference in sound frequency resolution between AP and non-AP (NAP) musicians, the hypothesis of the present study is that the failure of NAP musicians in pitch identification relies mainly in an inability to retrieve the correct verbal label to be assigned to the perceived musical note. The primary hypothesis is that, when asked to identify tones, NAP musicians confuse the verbal labels to be attached to the stimulus on the basis of their phonetic content. Data from two AP tests are reported, in which subjects had to respond in the presence or in the absence of visually presented verbal note labels (fixed Do solmization). Results show that NAP musicians confuse more frequently notes having a similar vowel in the note label. They tend to confuse e.g. a 261 Hz tone (Do) more often with Sol than, e.g., with La. As a second goal, we wondered whether this effect is lateralized, i.e. whether one hemisphere is more responsible than the other in the confusion of notes with similar labels. This question was addressed by observing pitch identification during dichotic listening. Results showed that there is a right hemispheric disadvantage, in NAP but not AP musicians, in the retrieval of the verbal label to be assigned to the perceived pitch. The present results indicate that absolute pitch has strong verbal bases, at least from a cognitive point of view.

Opposite hemispheric asymmetries for pitch identification in absolute pitch and non-absolute pitch musicians

The aim of the present study is to investigate functional laterality for pitch identification in subjects with absolute pitch (AP) and without absolute pitch (NAP). Forty-four musicians were divided into two groups (AP and NAP) on the basis of their performance in a preliminary standard AP-test. They were subsequently presented with an AP-test designed for dichotic listening, a neuropsychological technique which allows the investigation of functional hemispheric asymmetries. Dependent variables were accuracy and reaction time. It was observed that AP and NAP subjects exhibit opposite hemispheric specialization for pitch identification, AP subjects showing a bias towards the left hemisphere and NAP subjects showing a bias towards the right hemisphere. Results are discussed in the context of neuroimaging evidence of structural and functional asymmetries related to AP.

Relationship between response range and population in absolute pitch identification

Absolute pitch [AP] is defined as the ability to identify or produce a musical pitch without external reference pitch. In recent studies, AP perception is supposed to require the associations between pitch categories and their labels. AP was usually measured by identification preciseness of semitone unit of 12 equal tempered musical scale, but there was no clear criterion about degree of preciseness in that lower limit of AP, because AP and non-AP distributed continually, then couldn't be classified clearly. While, some studies insisted that if semitone errors were accepted as correct response, AP and non-AP distributed into 2 groups. Also, AP possessors showed qualitative characteristics such as preciseness or preference for white key pitches, and phonetic encoding for white key pitches. These facts suggested that if allowable ranges of the pitches were expanded, AP and non-AP could be classified clearly. In this study, identification tasks of 12 semitone- and 7 white key pitches of the musical scale were tested and examined relationship between response rates of several extended pitch ranges and distribution patterns of subjects in each pitch ranges. As a result, in pitch category of a semitone condition, there was no clear dichotomy between AP and non-AP, although the condition which accepted 1 or 2 adjacent semitone range as correct response had clear dichotomy. Moreover, in the white key identification task, pitch range of white key had clear dichotomy, and this condition divided subjects into 2 groups most clearly in all conditions in this study. These results suggested that majority of AP possessors used categories of white key pitches as base units of absolute pitch to associate with labels.