Gratton Irene, Brandimonte Maria A, Bruno Nicola
Conservatorio di musica Giuseppe Tartini, Trieste, Italy.
Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli, Italy.
PLoS One. 2016 Oct 19;11(10):e0163558. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163558. eCollection 2016.
The ability to remember tempo (the perceived frequency of musical pulse) without external references may be defined, by analogy with the notion of absolute pitch, as absolute tempo (AT). Anecdotal reports and sparse empirical evidence suggest that at least some individuals possess AT. However, to our knowledge, no systematic assessments of AT have been performed using laboratory tasks comparable to those assessing absolute pitch. In the present study, we operationalize AT as the ability to identify and reproduce tempo in the absence of rhythmic or melodic frames of reference and assess these abilities in musically trained and untrained participants. We asked 15 musicians and 15 non-musicians to listen to a seven-step `tempo scale' of metronome beats, each associated to a numerical label, and then to perform two memory tasks. In the first task, participants heard one of the tempi and attempted to report the correct label (identification task), in the second, they saw one label and attempted to tap the correct tempo (production task). A musical and visual excerpt was presented between successive trials as a distractor to prevent participants from using previous tempi as anchors. Thus, participants needed to encode tempo information with the corresponding label, store the information, and recall it to give the response. We found that more than half were able to perform above chance in at least one of the tasks, and that musical training differentiated between participants in identification, but not in production. These results suggest that AT is relatively wide-spread, relatively independent of musical training in tempo production, but further refined by training in tempo identification. We propose that at least in production, the underlying motor representations are related to tactus, a basic internal rhythmic period that may provide a body-based reference for encoding tempo.
在没有外部参照的情况下记住节拍速度（对音乐节奏的感知频率）的能力，可类比绝对音高的概念，定义为绝对节拍速度（AT）。轶事报告和少量实证证据表明，至少有一些人具备绝对节拍速度。然而，据我们所知，尚未使用与评估绝对音高类似的实验室任务对绝对节拍速度进行系统评估。在本研究中，我们将绝对节拍速度操作化为在没有节奏或旋律参照框架的情况下识别和再现节拍速度的能力，并在受过音乐训练和未受过音乐训练的参与者中评估这些能力。我们让15名音乐家和15名非音乐家听一个由节拍器节拍组成的七步“节拍速度量表”，每个节拍都与一个数字标签相关联，然后执行两项记忆任务。在第一项任务中，参与者听其中一个节拍速度并尝试报告正确的标签（识别任务）；在第二项任务中，他们看到一个标签并尝试打出正确的节拍速度（再现任务）。在连续试验之间会呈现一段音乐和视觉摘录作为干扰项，以防止参与者将之前的节拍速度用作参照。因此，参与者需要将节拍速度信息与相应标签进行编码、存储信息并回忆起来以做出反应。我们发现，超过一半的参与者至少在一项任务中表现优于随机水平，并且音乐训练在识别任务中区分了参与者，但在再现任务中没有。这些结果表明，绝对节拍速度相对普遍，在节拍速度再现方面相对独立于音乐训练，但在节拍速度识别训练中会得到进一步提升。我们提出，至少在再现方面，潜在的运动表征与节拍有关，节拍是一种基本的内部节奏周期，可能为编码节拍速度提供基于身体的参照。
