Absolute pitch: effects of timbre on note-naming ability

Absolute pitch judgments of familiar melodies generalize across timbre and octave

Most listeners can determine when a familiar recording of music has been shifted in musical key by as little as one semitone (e.g., from B to C major). These findings appear to suggest that absolute pitch memory is widespread in the general population. However, the use of familiar recordings makes it unclear whether these findings genuinely reflect absolute melody-key associations for at least two reasons. First, listeners may be able to use spectral cues from the familiar instrumentation of the recordings to determine when a familiar recording has been shifted in pitch. Second, listeners may be able to rely solely on pitch height cues (e.g., relying on a feeling that an incorrect recording sounds "too high" or "too low"). Neither of these strategies would require an understanding of pitch chroma or musical key. The present experiments thus assessed whether listeners could make accurate absolute melody-key judgments when listening to novel versions of these melodies, differing from the iconic recording in timbre (Experiment 1) or timbre and octave (Experiment 2). Listeners in both experiments were able to select the correct-key version of the familiar melody at rates that were well above chance. These results fit within a growing body of research supporting the idea that most listeners, regardless of formal musical training, have robust representations of absolute pitch - based on pitch chroma - that generalize to novel listening situations. Implications for theories of auditory pitch memory are discussed.

Generalizing across tonal context, timbre, and octave in rapid absolute pitch training

Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to name any musical note without the use of a reference note. Given that genuine AP representations are based on the identification of isolated notes by their tone chroma, they are considered to be invariant to (1) surrounding tonal context, (2) changes in instrumental timbre, and (3) changes in octave register. However, there is considerable variability in the literature in terms of how AP is trained and tested along these dimensions, making recent claims about AP learning difficult to assess. Here, we examined the effect of tonal context on participant success with a single-note identification training paradigm, including how learning generalized to an untested instrument and octave. We found that participants were able to rapidly learn to distinguish C from other notes, with and without feedback and regardless of the tonal context in which C was presented. Participants were also able to partly generalize this skill to an untrained instrument. However, participants displayed the weakest generalization in recognizing C in a higher octave. The results indicate that participants were likely attending to pitch height in addition to pitch chroma - a conjecture that was supported by analyzing the pattern of response errors. These findings highlight the complex nature of note representation in AP, which requires note identification across contexts, going beyond the simple storage of a note fundamental. The importance of standardizing testing that spans both timbre and octave in assessing AP and further implications on past literature and future work are discussed.

Auditory temporal resolution and backward masking in musicians with absolute pitch

Among the many questions regarding the ability to effortlessly name musical notes without a reference, also known as absolute pitch, the neural processes by which this phenomenon operates are still a matter of debate. Although a perceptual subprocess is currently accepted by the literature, the participation of some aspects of auditory processing still needs to be determined. We conducted two experiments to investigate the relationship between absolute pitch and two aspects of auditory temporal processing, namely temporal resolution and backward masking. In the first experiment, musicians were organized into two groups according to the presence of absolute pitch, as determined by a pitch identification test, and compared regarding their performance in the Gaps-in-Noise test, a gap detection task for assessing temporal resolution. Despite the lack of statistically significant difference between the groups, the Gaps-in-Noise test measures were significant predictors of the measures for pitch naming precision, even after controlling for possible confounding variables. In the second experiment, another two groups of musicians with and without absolute pitch were submitted to the backward masking test, with no difference between the groups and no correlation between backward masking and absolute pitch measures. The results from both experiments suggest that only part of temporal processing is involved in absolute pitch, indicating that not all aspects of auditory perception are related to the perceptual subprocess. Possible explanations for these findings include the notable overlap of brain areas involved in both temporal resolution and absolute pitch, which is not present in the case of backward masking, and the relevance of temporal resolution to analyze the temporal fine structure of sound in pitch perception.

Use of explicit priming to phenotype absolute pitch ability

Musicians with absolute pitch (AP) can name the pitch of a musical note in isolation. Expression of this unusual ability is thought to be influenced by heritability, early music training and current practice. However, our understanding of factors shaping its expression is hampered by testing and scoring methods that treat AP as dichotomous. These fail to capture the observed variability in pitch-naming accuracy among reported AP possessors. The aim of this study was to trial a novel explicit priming paradigm to explore phenotypic variability of AP. Thirty-five musically experienced individuals (M_age = 29 years, range 18–68; 14 males) with varying AP ability completed a standard AP task and the explicit priming AP task. Results showed: 1) phenotypic variability of AP ability, including high-accuracy AP, heterogeneous intermediate performers, and chance-level performers; 2) intermediate performance profiles that were either reliant on or independent of relative pitch strategies, as identified by the priming task; and 3) the emergence of a bimodal distribution of AP performance when adopting scoring criteria that assign credit to semitone errors. These findings show the importance of methods in studying behavioural traits, and are a key step towards identifying AP phenotypes. Replication of our results in larger samples will further establish the usefulness of this priming paradigm in AP research.

Voice disadvantage effects in absolute and relative pitch judgments

Absolute pitch (AP) possessors can identify musical notes without an external reference. Most AP studies have used musical instruments and pure tones for testing, rather than the human voice. However, the voice is crucial for human communication in both speech and music, and evidence for voice-specific neural processing mechanisms and brain regions suggests that AP processing of voice may be different. Here, musicians with AP or relative pitch (RP) completed online AP or RP note-naming tasks, respectively. Four synthetic sound categories were tested: voice, viola, simplified voice, and simplified viola. Simplified sounds had the same long-term spectral information but no temporal fluctuations (such as vibrato). The AP group was less accurate in judging the note names for voice than for viola in both the original and simplified conditions. A smaller, marginally significant effect was observed in the RP group. A voice disadvantage effect was also observed in a simple pitch discrimination task, even with simplified stimuli. To reconcile these results with voice-advantage effects in other domains, it is proposed that voices are processed in a way that voice- or speech-relevant features are facilitated at the expense of features that are less relevant to voice processing, such as fine-grained pitch information.

Musical instrument familiarity affects statistical learning of tone sequences

Most listeners have an implicit understanding of the rules that govern how music unfolds over time. This knowledge is acquired in part through statistical learning, a robust learning mechanism that allows individuals to extract regularities from the environment. However, it is presently unclear how this prior musical knowledge might facilitate or interfere with the learning of novel tone sequences that do not conform to familiar musical rules. In the present experiment, participants listened to novel, statistically structured tone sequences composed of pitch intervals not typically found in Western music. Between participants, the tone sequences either had the timbre of artificial, computerized instruments or familiar instruments (piano or violin). Knowledge of the statistical regularities was measured as by a two-alternative forced choice recognition task, requiring discrimination between novel sequences that followed versus violated the statistical structure, assessed at three time points (immediately post-training, as well as one day and one week post-training). Compared to artificial instruments, training on familiar instruments resulted in reduced accuracy. Moreover, sequences from familiar instruments - but not artificial instruments - were more likely to be judged as grammatical when they contained intervals that approximated those commonly used in Western music, even though this cue was non-informative. Overall, these results demonstrate that instrument familiarity can interfere with the learning of novel statistical regularities, presumably through biasing memory representations to be aligned with Western musical structures. These results demonstrate that real-world experience influences statistical learning in a non-linguistic domain, supporting the view that statistical learning involves the continuous updating of existing representations, rather than the establishment of entirely novel ones.

Understanding Sensitive Period Effects in Musical Training

Adult ability in complex cognitive domains, including music, is commonly thought of as the product of gene-environment interactions, where genetic predispositions influence and are modulated by experience, resulting in the final phenotypic expression. Recently, however, the important contribution of maturation to gene-environment interactions has become better understood. Thus, the timing of exposure to specific experience, such as music training, has been shown to produce long-term impacts on adult behaviour and the brain. Work from our lab and others shows that musical training before the ages of 7-9 enhances performance on musical tasks and modifies brain structure and function, sometimes in unexpected ways. The goal of this paper is to present current evidence for sensitive period effects for musical training in the context of what is known about brain maturation and to present a framework that integrates genetic, environmental and maturational influences on the development of musical skill. We believe that this framework can also be applied more broadly to understanding how predispositions, brain development and experience interact.

Individual differences in human frequency-following response predict pitch labeling ability

The frequency-following response (FFR) provides a measure of phase-locked auditory encoding in humans and has been used to study subcortical processing in the auditory system. While effects of experience on the FFR have been reported, few studies have examined whether individual differences in early sensory encoding have measurable effects on human performance. Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to label musical notes without reference notes, provides an excellent model system for testing how early neural encoding supports specialized auditory skills. Results show that the FFR predicts pitch labelling performance better than traditional measures related to AP (age of music onset, tonal language experience, pitch adjustment and just-noticeable-difference scores). Moreover, the stimulus type used to elicit the FFR (tones or speech) impacts predictive performance in a manner that is consistent with prior research. Additionally, the FFR predicts labelling performance for piano tones better than unfamiliar sine tones. Taken together, the FFR reliably distinguishes individuals based on their explicit pitch labeling abilities, which highlights the complex dynamics between sensory processing and cognition.

Absolute pitch is disrupted by a memory illusion

An experiment is reported, showing that short-term memory for pitch in absolute pitch (AP) possessors, while substantially more accurate than in AP nonpossessors, is also subject to illusory conjunctions of pitch and time and so can be distorted or enhanced by a single tone embedded in a sequence of six other tones. Both AP possessors and AP nonpossessors performed a short-term memory task. A test tone was presented, then a sequence of six intervening tones, and then a probe tone. The test and probe tones either were identical in pitch or differed by a semitone. The AP nonpossessors judged whether the test and probe tones were the same or different, and the AP possessors identified the test and probe tones by name. In some conditions, a tone of identical pitch to the probe tone or an octave removed from this tone was included in the intervening sequence. In both the AP possessors and AP nonpossessors, this illusion-producing tone increased judgments that the test and probe tones were identical. These results accord with a model of the system underlying short-term memory for pitch proposed earlier and show that this system is bidimensional in nature, involving both pitch height and pitch class.

A new approach to measuring absolute pitch on a psychometric theory of isolated pitch perception: Is it disentangling specific groups or capturing a continuous ability?

Absolute Pitch (AP) is commonly defined as a rare ability that allows an individual to identify any pitch by name. Most researchers use classificatory tests for AP which tracks the number of isolated correct answers. However, each researcher chooses their own procedure for what should be considered correct or incorrect in measuring this ability. Consequently, it is impossible to evaluate comparatively how the stimuli and criteria classify individuals in the same way. We thus adopted a psychometric perspective, approaching AP as a latent trait. Via the Latent Variable Model, we evaluated the consistency and validity for a measure to test for AP ability. A total of 783 undergraduate music students participated in the test. The test battery comprised 10 isolated pitches. All collected data were analyzed with two different rating criteria (perfect and imperfect) under three Latent Variable Model approaches: continuous (Item Response Theory with two and three parameters), categorical (Latent Class Analysis), and the Hybrid model. According to model fit information indices, the perfect approach (only exact pitch responses as correct) measurement model had a better fit under the trait (continuous) specification. This contradicts the usual assumption of a division between AP and non-AP possessors. Alternatively, the categorical solution for the two classes demonstrated the best solution for the imperfect approach (exact pitch responses and semitone deviations considered as correct).

Articulatory motor planning and timbral idiosyncrasies as underlying mechanisms of instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert musicians

The study of musical expertise illustrates how intense training in a specialized domain may instigate development of implicit skills. While absolute pitch, or the ability to identify musical pitches without external reference, is rare even in professional musicians and is understood to have a genetic component, anecdotal evidence and pilot data suggest that some musicians without traditional absolute pitch are nonetheless better able to name notes played on their musical instrument of expertise than notes played on less familiar instruments. We have previously termed this particular gain in absolute pitch identification ability “instrument-specific absolute pitch” (ISAP) and have proposed that this skill is related to learned instrument type-specific timbral and intonational idiosyncrasies and articulatory motor planning activated by the timbre of the instrument. In this Registered Report Protocol, we describe two experiments designed to investigate ISAP in professional oboists. Experiment 1 tests for ISAP ability by comparing oboists’ pitch identification accuracies for notes played on the oboe and on the piano. A subset of the participants from Experiment 1 who demonstrate this ability will be recruited for Experiment 2; the purpose of Experiment 2 is to test hypotheses concerning a mechanistic explanation for ISAP. The outcome of these experiments may provide support for the theory that some individuals have ISAP and that the underlying mechanisms of this ability may rely on the perception of subtle timbral/intonational idiosyncrasies and on articulatory motor planning developed through intensive long-term training. In general, this work will contribute to the understanding of specialized expertise, specifically of implicit abilities and biases that are not addressed directly in training, but that may yet develop through practice of a related skill set.

A Theory of Instrument-Specific Absolute Pitch

While absolute pitch (AP)—the ability to name musical pitches globally and without reference—is rare in expert musicians, anecdotal evidence suggests that some musicians may better identify pitches played on their primary instrument than pitches played on other instruments. We call this phenomenon “instrument-specific absolute pitch” (ISAP). In this paper we present a theory of ISAP. Specifically, we offer the hypothesis that some expert musicians without global AP may be able to more accurately identify pitches played on their primary instrument(s), and we propose timbral cues and articulatory motor imagery as two underlying mechanisms. Depending on whether informative timbral cues arise from performer- or instrument-specific idiosyncrasies or from timbre-facilitated tonotopic representations, we predict that performance may be enhanced for notes played by oneself, notes played on one’s own personal instrument, and/or notes played on any exemplar of one’s own instrument type. Sounds of one’s primary instrument may moreover activate kinesthetic memory and motor imagery, aiding pitch identification. In order to demonstrate how our theory can be tested, we report the methodology and analysis of two exemplary experiments conducted on two case-study participants who are professional oboists. The aim of the first experiment was to determine whether the oboists demonstrated ISAP ability, while the purpose of the second experiment was to provide a preliminary investigation of the underlying mechanisms. The results of the first experiment revealed that only one of the two oboists showed an advantage for identifying oboe tones over piano tones. For this oboist demonstrating ISAP, the second experiment demonstrated that pitch-naming accuracy decreased and variance around the correct pitch value increased as an effect of transposition and motor interference, but not of instrument or performer. These preliminary data suggest that some musicians possess ISAP while others do not. Timbral cues and motor imagery may both play roles in the acquisition of this ability. Based on our case study findings, we provide methodological considerations and recommendations for future empirical testing of our theory of ISAP.

Is it impossible to acquire absolute pitch in adulthood?

Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the rare ability to name the pitch of a tone without external reference. It is widely believed to be only for the selected few with rare genetic makeup and early musical training during the critical period, and therefore acquiring AP in adulthood is impossible. Previous studies have not offered a strong test of the effect of training because of issues like small sample size and insufficient training. In three experiments, adults learned to name pitches in a computerized, gamified and personalized training protocol for 12 to 40 hours, with the number of pitches gradually increased from three to twelve. Across the three experiments, the training covered different octaves, timbre, and training environment (inside or outside laboratory). AP learning showed classic characteristics of perceptual learning, including generalization of learning dependent on the training stimuli, and sustained improvement for at least one to three months. 14% of the participants (6 out of 43) were able to name twelve pitches at 90% or above accuracy, comparable to that of 'AP possessors' as defined in the literature. Overall, AP continues to be learnable in adulthood, which challenges the view that AP development requires both rare genetic predisposition and learning within the critical period. The finding calls for reconsideration of the role of learning in the occurrence of AP, and pushes the field to pinpoint and explain the differences, if any, between the aspects of AP more trainable in adulthood and the aspects of AP that are potentially exclusive for the few exceptional AP possessors observed in the real world.

Individual differences in absolute pitch performance: Contributions of working memory, musical expertise, and tonal language background

By definition, individuals with absolute pitch (AP) can categorize with near perfect accuracy without a reference pitch. This definition implies a uniformity of performance across people; however, in reality AP is a complex, multidimensional ability, shaped by both early and recent auditory experiences. In the present study we assess whether AP possessors' accuracy for identifying isolated notes is more distributed when judging more challenging instrumental timbres and octaves, as well as whether variability in note categorization could be explained through individual differences in musical expertise, language background, or working memory. In a standard test of AP, all participants performed virtually perfectly. When tested on the challenging notes, performance was more normally distributed. In exploratory analyses, we found (1) lower accuracy among participants who speak a tonal language, (2) less musical expertise among tonal language participants, and (3) a positive relationship between working memory and note performance among tonal language participants that was not present for non-tonal language participants. Taken together, these results highlight the complexity of AP categorization when considered as an auditory skill rather than a native talent. The observation that working memory may be an important in AP categorization under some challenging circumstances is consistent with recent theoretical accounts of how working memory and expertise relate to auditory recognition more broadly.

When speech enhances Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes: Joint spatial associations of pitch and timbre in nonmusicians

Previous studies have shown that the effect of the Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) depends on various features, such as task conditions (whether pitch height is implicit or explicit), response dimension (horizontal vs. vertical), presence or absence of a reference tone, and former musical training of the participants. In the present study, we investigated the effects of pitch range and timbre: in particular, how timbre (piano vs. vocal) contributes to the horizontal and vertical SMARC effect in nonmusicians under varied pitch range conditions. Nonmusicians performed a timbre judgement task in which the pitch range was either small (6 or 8 semitone steps) or large (9 or 12 semitone steps) in a horizontal and a vertical response setting. For piano sounds, SMARC effects were observed in all conditions. For the vocal sounds, in contrast, SMARC effects depended on pitch range. We concluded that the occurrence of the SMARC effect, especially in horizontal response settings, depends on the interaction of the timbre (vocal and piano) and pitch range if vocal and instrumental sounds are combined in one experiment: the human voice enhances the attention, both to the vocal and the instrumental sounds.

What the [bleep]? Enhanced absolute pitch memory for a 1000Hz sine tone

Many individuals are able to perceive when the tuning of familiar stimuli, such as popular music recordings, has been altered. This suggests a kind of ubiquitous pitch memory, though it is unclear how this ability differs across individuals with and without absolute pitch (AP) and whether it plays any role in AP. In the present study, we take advantage of a salient single frequency - the 1000Hz sine tone used to censor taboo words in broadcast media - to assess the nature of this kind of pitch memory across individuals with and without AP. We show that non-AP participants are accurate at selecting the correct version of the censor tone among incorrect versions shifted by either one or two semitones, though their accuracy was still below that of an AP population (Experiment 1). This suggests a benefit for AP listeners that could be due to the use of explicit note categories or greater amounts of musical training. However, AP possessors still outperformed all non-AP participants when incorrect versions of the censor tone were shifted within a note category, even when controlling for musical experience (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that AP listeners did not appear to possess a category label for the censor tone that could have helped them differentiate the censor tones used in Experiment 2. Overall, these results suggest that AP possessors may have better pitch memory, even when divorced from pitch labeling (note categories). As such, these results have implications for how AP may develop and be maintained.

Octave Bias in Pitch Perception: The Influence of Pitch Height on Pitch Class Identification

Pitch height and pitch class are different, but strictly related, percepts of music tones. To investigate the influence of pitch height in a pitch class identification task, we systematically analyzed the errors-in terms of direction and amount-committed by a group of musicians. The aim of our study was to verify the existence of constant errors in the identification of pitch classes across consecutive octaves. Stimuli were single piano tones from the C major scale executed in two consecutive octaves. Participants showed different response patterns in the two octaves. The direction of errors revealed a constant tendency to underestimate pitch classes in the lowest octave and to overestimate pitch classes in the highest octave. Thus, pitch height showed to influence pitch class identification. We called this bias "pitch class polarization", since the same pitch class was judged to be respectively lower and higher, depending on relatively low or high pitch height.

Rapid Communication: Pianists exhibit enhanced memory for vocal melodies but not piano melodies

Nonmusicians remember vocal melodies (i.e., sung to la la) better than instrumental melodies. If greater exposure to the voice contributes to those effects, then long-term experience with instrumental timbres should elicit instrument-specific advantages. Here we evaluate this hypothesis by comparing pianists with other musicians and nonmusicians. We also evaluate the possibility that absolute pitch (AP), which involves exceptional memory for isolated pitches, influences melodic memory. Participants heard 24 melodies played in four timbres (voice, piano, banjo, marimba) and were subsequently required to distinguish the melodies heard previously from 24 novel melodies presented in the same timbres. Musicians performed better than nonmusicians, but both groups showed a comparable memory advantage for vocal melodies. Moreover, pianists performed no better on melodies played on piano than on other instruments, and AP musicians performed no differently than non-AP musicians. The findings confirm the robust nature of the voice advantage and rule out explanations based on familiarity, practice, and motor representations.

Absolute and relative pitch: Global versus local processing of chords

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce notes without any reference note. An ongoing debate exists regarding the benefits or disadvantages of AP in processing music. One of the main issues in this context is whether the categorical perception of pitch in AP possessors may interfere in processing tasks requiring relative pitch (RP). Previous studies, focusing mainly on melodic and interval perception, have obtained inconsistent results. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of AP and RP separately, using isolated chords. Seventy-three musicians were categorized into four groups of high and low AP and RP, and were tested on two tasks: identifying chord types (Task 1), and identifying a single note within a chord (Task 2). A main effect of RP on Task 1 and an interaction between AP and RP in reaction times were found. On Task 2 main effects of AP and RP, and an interaction were found, with highest performance in participants with both high AP and RP. Results suggest that AP and RP should be regarded as two different abilities, and that AP may slow down reaction times for tasks requiring global processing.

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.

Differences in mismatch responses to vowels and musical intervals: MEG evidence

We investigated the electrophysiological response to matched two-formant vowels and two-note musical intervals, with the goal of examining whether music is processed differently from language in early cortical responses. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we compared the mismatch-response (MMN/MMF, an early, pre-attentive difference-detector occurring approximately 200 ms post-onset) to musical intervals and vowels composed of matched frequencies. Participants heard blocks of two stimuli in a passive oddball paradigm in one of three conditions: sine waves, piano tones and vowels. In each condition, participants heard two-formant vowels or musical intervals whose frequencies were 11, 12, or 24 semitones apart. In music, 12 semitones and 24 semitones are perceived as highly similar intervals (one and two octaves, respectively), while in speech 12 semitones and 11 semitones formant separations are perceived as highly similar (both variants of the vowel in ‘cut’). Our results indicate that the MMN response mirrors the perceptual one: larger MMNs were elicited for the 12–11 pairing in the music conditions than in the language condition; conversely, larger MMNs were elicited to the 12–24 pairing in the language condition that in the music conditions, suggesting that within 250 ms of hearing complex auditory stimuli, the neural computation of similarity, just as the behavioral one, differs significantly depending on whether the context is music or speech.

Absolute pitch memory: its prevalence among musicians and dependence on the testing context

Absolute pitch (AP) is widely believed to be a rare ability possessed by only a small group of gifted and special individuals (AP possessors). While AP has fascinated psychologists, neuroscientists, and musicians for more than a century, no theory can satisfactorily explain why this ability is so rare and difficult to learn. Here, we show that AP ability appears rare because of the methodological issues of the standard pitch-naming test. Specifically, the standard test unnecessarily poses a high decisional demand on AP judgments and uses a testing context that is highly inconsistent with one's musical training. These extra cognitive challenges are not central to AP memory per se and have thus led to consistent underestimation of AP ability in the population. Using the standard test, we replicated the typical findings that the accuracy for general violinists was low (12.38 %; chance level = 0 %). With identical stimuli, scoring criteria, and participants, violinists attained 25 % accuracy in a pitch verification test in which the decisional demand of AP judgment was reduced. When the testing context was increasingly similar to their musical experience, verification accuracy improved further and reached 39 %, three times higher than that for the standard test. Results were replicated with a separate group of pianists. Our findings challenge current theories about AP and suggest that the prevalence of AP among musicians has been highly underestimated in prior work. A multimodal framework is proposed to better explain AP memory.

Enhancement of speech-relevant auditory acuity in absolute pitch possessors

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify the frequency or musical name of a specific tone, or to identify a tone without comparing it with any objective reference tone. While AP has recently been shown to be associated with morphological changes and neurophysiological adaptations in the planum temporale, a cortical area in the brain involved in speech perception processes, no behavioral evidence of speech-relevant auditory acuity in any AP possessors has hitherto been reported. In order to seek such evidence, in the present study, 15 professional musicians with AP and 14 without AP, all of whom had acquired Japanese as their first language, were asked to identify isolated Japanese syllables as quickly as possible after these syllables were presented auditorily. When the mean latency to the syllable identification was compared, it was significantly shorter in AP possessors than in non-AP possessors whether the presented syllables were those used as Japanese labels representing the 7 tones constituting an octave or not. The latency to hear the stimuli per se did not differ according to whether the participants were AP possessors or not. The results indicate the possibility that possessing AP provides one with extraordinarily enhanced acuity to individual syllables per se as fundamental units of a segmented word in the speech stream.