Department of Music, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 Feb;85(2):525-542. doi: 10.3758/s13414-023-02653-0. Epub 2023 Jan 23.
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.
绝对音高 (AP) 是一种罕见的能力，无需参考音即可命名任何音符。由于真正的 AP 表示是基于其音高色度识别孤立音符，因此它们被认为不受（1）周围音调环境、（2）乐器音色变化和（3）八度音域变化的影响。然而，在如何沿着这些维度训练和测试 AP 方面，文献中存在相当大的可变性，使得最近关于 AP 学习的说法难以评估。在这里，我们通过单音符识别训练范式研究了音调环境对参与者成功的影响，包括学习如何推广到未经测试的乐器和八度音阶。我们发现，参与者能够快速学习区分 C 和其他音符，无论是否有反馈以及 C 呈现的音调环境如何。参与者也能够部分地将这种技能推广到未训练的乐器上。然而，参与者在识别高音调的 C 时表现出最弱的泛化能力。结果表明，参与者可能不仅关注音高色度，还关注音高高度——这一推测得到了分析响应错误模式的支持。这些发现强调了 AP 中音符表示的复杂性质，它需要在不同的情况下识别音符，不仅仅是简单地存储音符的基频。讨论了在评估 AP 时标准化测试跨越音色和八度音阶的重要性，以及对过去文献和未来工作的进一步影响。
