Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Aug;128(2):890-3. doi: 10.1121/1.3458848.
Absolute pitch (AP)--the ability to name a musical note in the absence of a reference note--is a rare ability whose relevance to musical proficiency has so far been unclear. Sixty trained musicians--thirty who self-reported AP and thirty with equivalent age of onset and duration of musical training--were administered a test for AP and also a musical dictation test not requiring AP. Performance on both types of test were highly correlated (r=.81, p<.001). When subjects were divided into three groups based on their performance on the AP test, highly significant differences between the groups emerged. Those who clearly possessed AP showed remarkably high performance on the musical dictation test, the scores of those without AP varied widely, and the performance of the intermediate group of borderline AP possessors fell between that of clear AP possessors and clear nonpossessors. The findings support the hypothesis that AP is associated with proficiency in performing other musical tasks, and run counter to the claim that it confers a disadvantage in the processing of relative pitch.
绝对音高（AP）——即在没有基准音的情况下命名音符的能力——是一种罕见的能力，其与音乐能力的相关性目前尚不清楚。60 名经过训练的音乐家——其中 30 名自述具有 AP，30 名具有同等的起始年龄和音乐训练时间——接受了 AP 测试和不需要 AP 的音乐听写测试。两种类型的测试的表现都高度相关（r=.81，p<.001）。当根据 AP 测试的表现将受试者分为三组时，各组之间出现了显著差异。那些明显具有 AP 的人在音乐听写测试中表现出色，那些没有 AP 的人的得分差异很大，而具有边缘 AP 能力的中间组的表现则介于明显具有 AP 的人和明显没有 AP 的人之间。这些发现支持了 AP 与执行其他音乐任务的能力相关的假设，与 AP 会对相对音高的处理造成不利影响的说法相悖。
