The effect of intensity on relative pitch

In two experiments, we examined the effect of intensity and intensity change on judgements of pitch differences or interval size. In Experiment 1, 39 musically untrained participants rated the size of the interval spanned by two pitches within individual gliding tones. Tones were presented at high intensity, low intensity, looming intensity (up-ramp), and fading intensity (down-ramp) and glided between two pitches spanning either 6 or 7 semitones (a tritone or a perfect fifth interval). The pitch shift occurred in either ascending or descending directions. Experiment 2 repeated the conditions of Experiment 1 but the shifts in pitch and intensity occurred across two discrete tones (i.e., a melodic interval). Results indicated that participants were sensitive to the differences in interval size presented: Ratings were significantly higher when two pitches differed by 7 semitones than when they differed by 6 semitones. However, ratings were also dependent on whether the interval was high or low in intensity, whether it increased or decreased in intensity across the two pitches, and whether the interval was ascending or descending in pitch. Such influences illustrate that the perception of pitch relations does not always adhere to a logarithmic function as implied by their musical labels, but that identical intervals are perceived as substantially different in size depending on other attributes of the sound source.     

The influence of music-elicited emotions and relative pitch on absolute pitch memory for familiar melodies

Levitin's findings that nonmusicians could produce from memory the absolute pitches of self-selected pop songs have been widely cited in the music psychology literature. These findings suggest that latent absolute pitch (AP) memory may be a more widespread trait within the population than traditional AP labelling ability. However, it has been left unclear what factors may facilitate absolute pitch retention for familiar pieces of music. The aim of the present paper was to investigate factors that may contribute to latent AP memory using Levitin's sung production paradigm for AP memory and comparing results to the outcomes of a pitch labelling task, a relative pitch memory test, measures of music-induced emotions, and various measures of participants' musical backgrounds. Our results suggest that relative pitch memory and the quality and degree of music-elicited emotions impact on latent AP memory.     

Ethnicity effects in relative pitch

Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to identify a musical pitch, occurs at a higher rate among East Asian musicians. This has stimulated considerable research on the comparative contributions of genetic and environmental factors. Two studies examined whether a similar ethnicity effect is found for relative pitch (RP), identifying the distance or interval between two tones. Nonmusicians (n = 103) were trained to label musical intervals and were subsequently tested on interval identification. We establish similar ethnicity effects: Chinese and Korean participants consistently outperformed other participants in RP tasks, but not in a “relative rhythm” control task. This effect is not driven by previous musical or tone-language experience. The parallel with the East Asian advantage for AP suggests that enhanced perceptual-cognitive processing of pitch is more general and is not limited to highly trained musicians. This effect opens up many research questions concerning the environmental and genetic contributions related to this more general pitch-based ability.     

The relative law of effect: effects of shock intensity on response strength in multiple schedules

Key pecking of four birds was reinforced with food according to a two-component multiple variable-interval 1-minute variable-interval 4-minute schedule. In addition, key pecking was punished by a brief shock according to a variable-interval 30-second schedule during both components of the multiple schedule. The intensity of the shock was varied. For all birds, punishment had a stronger suppressive effect on the responding maintained by the leaner food schedule, and the ratio of responding during the two components of the multiple schedule became closer to the ratio of reinforcement as shock intensity was increased, as the relative law of effect predicts. At the higher shock intensity, there was some evidence that the ratio of responses overmatched the ratio of reinforcements.     

Effects of harmonics on relative pitch discrimination in a musical context

The contribution of different harmonics to pitch salience in a musical context was examined by requiring subjects to discriminate a small (1/4 semitone) pitch change in one note of a melody that repeated in transposition. In Experiment 1, performance was superior when more harmonics were present (first five vs. fundamental alone) and when the second harmonic (of tones consisting of the first two harmonics) was in tune compared with when it was out of tune. In Experiment 2, the effects of harmonics 6 and 8, which stand in octave-equivalent simple ratios to the fundamental (2∶3 and 1∶2, respectively) were compared with harmonics 5 and 7, which stand in more complex ratios (4:5 and 4:7, respectively). When the harmonics fused into a single percept (tones consisting of harmonics 1, 2, and one of 5, 6, 7, or 8), performance was higher when harmonics 6 or 8 were present than when harmonics 5 or 7 were present. When the harmonics did not fuse into a single percept (tones consisting of the fundamental and one of 5, 6, 7, or 8), there was no effect of ratio simplicity.     

The Doppler effect is not what you think it is: dramatic pitch change due to dynamic intensity change

Historically, auditory pitch has been considered to be a function of acoustic frequency, with only a small effect being due to absolute intensity. Yet we found that when tones are Doppler shifted so that frequency drops, the pitch dramatically rises and falls, closely following the pattern of dynamic intensity change. We show that continuous intensity change can produce pitch variation comparable to a frequency change approaching an octave. This effect opposes and is an order of magnitude larger than the well-known effect of discrete intensity change in the frequency range employed. We propose that the perceptual interaction of continuous changes in pitch and loudness reflects a natural correlation between changes in frequency and intensity that is neurally encoded to facilitate the parsing and processing of meaningful acoustic patterns.     

The relative effect of cue interaction

It is well established that two predictor cues ( A and B ) of a common outcome interact in that the judgement of the relationship between each cue and the outcome is influenced by the pairing history of the other cue with that outcome. For example, when the contingency of A with an outcome is weaker than the contingency of B with that outcome, the rating of the predictiveness of A is reduced relative to a situation where only A is paired with the outcome. One explanation of such cue interaction effects is provided by the conditional ΔP account. Spellman (1996b) derived a counterintuitive prediction of the conditional ΔP account where cue interaction should not occur under certain conditions even though a relatively poor predictor of an outcome is paired with a relatively good predictor of that outcome. However, Spellman (1996b) did not provide data to evaluate this prediction. In the present paper, we report the relevant data and show that they are consistent with the conditional ΔP account. A competing account of cue interaction is provided by the Rescorla-Wagner (RW) model. We derive the predictions of the RW model for the conditions specified by Spellman (1996b), and show that at asymptote the predictions of the RW model are identical to those of the conditional ΔP account.     

The effect of task and pitch structure on pitch-time interactions in music

Musical pitch-time relations were explored by investigating the effect of temporal variation on pitch perception. In Experiment 1, trained musicians heard a standard tone followed by a tonal context and then a comparison tone. They then performed one of two tasks. In the cognitive task, they indicated whether the comparison tone was in the key of the context. In the perceptual task, they judged whether the comparison tone was higher or lower than the standard tone. For both tasks, the comparison tone occurred early, on time, or late with respect to temporal expectancies established by the context. Temporal variation did not affect accuracy in either task. Experiment 2 used the perceptual task and varied the pitch structure by employing either a tonal or an atonal context. Temporal variation did not affect accuracy for tonal contexts, but did for atonal contexts. Experiment 3 replicated these results and controlled potential confounds. We argue that tonal contexts bias attention toward pitch and eliminate effects of temporal variation, whereas atonal contexts do not, thus fostering pitch-time interactions. Psychonomic Society, Inc.     

Memory for melody: infants use a relative pitch code

Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in music and prosody in speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch, and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily relative pitch processors. Infants familiarized with a melody for 7 days preferred, on the eighth day, to listen to a novel melody in comparison to the familiarized one, regardless of whether the melodies at test were presented at the same pitch as during familiarization or transposed up or down by a perfect fifth (7/12th of an octave) or a tritone (1/2 octave). On the other hand, infants showed no preference for a transposed over original-pitch version of the familiarized melody, indicating that either they did not remember the absolute pitch, or it was not as salient to them as the relative pitch.     

The relative influence of pitch and timbre on the apparent location of sound in the median sagittal plane

Listeners were requested to locate sounds originating in the median sagittal plane (MSP). The stimuli, 75-Msec pulses, were repeated at a rate of 200 times/sec and were filtered to transmit narrow bands centered about 0.63, 1.6, 2.5, or 6.3 kHz. Despite the sameness of pitch generated by all stimuli, Os perceived the 0.63-, 1.6-, and 2.5-kHz-centered sounds as originating low, middle, and high, respectively, in the MSP, regardless of their actual positions. The stimuli centered about 6.3 kHz, on the other hand, were located accurately by most Os. These findings were interpreted to mean that under conditions of inadequate auditory cues, timbre, not pitch, influences perceived elevation. The implication is that timbre also served as the cue for the apparent elevation of those sounds which, due to their high-frequency components, can be located accurately.     

Performed or observed keyboard actions affect pianists' judgements of relative pitch

Action can affect visual perception if the action's expected sensory effects resemble a concurrent unstable or deviant event. To determine whether action can also change auditory perception, participants were required to play pairs of octave-ambiguous tones by pressing successive keys on a piano or computer keyboard and to judge whether each pitch interval was rising or falling. Both pianists and nonpianist musicians gave significantly more “rising” responses when the order of key presses was left-to-right than when it was right-to-left, in accord with the pitch mapping of the piano. However, the effect was much larger in pianists. Pianists showed a similarly large effect when they passively observed the experimenter pressing keys on a piano keyboard, as long as the keyboard faced the participant. The results suggest that acquired action–effect associations can affect auditory perceptual judgement.     

The effects of relative intensity of cue and marker on marked trace conditioning in pigeons

Pigeons were trained on trace conditioning procedures (autoshaping) in which a keylight conditioned stimulus (CS) was presented for 5 sec and followed after a 10-sec temporal gap by food. In Experiment 1, acquisition of conditioned responding to the CS was facilitated when it was immediately followed by a brief stimulus, but only when the brief stimulus was of greater intensity than the trace CS. In Experiment 2, this facilitation effect was found when a more intense brief stimulus followed the trace CS immediately, but not when it was delayed. In both experiments, responding to the target CS was compared within-subjects to that to a control CS, which eliminated factors such as second-order conditioning as an explanation for the facilitation effects. Together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that a brief stimulus may mark immediately preceding events in memory and thus facilitate their association with delayed reinforcement only if the brief stimulus is relatively more intense, and thus more salient, than the target events. In Experiment 3, we found substantial generalization of this facilitation effect from the marked CS to the control CS and conclude that the results of Experiments 1 and 2 may underestimate the magnitude of these marking effects.     

The effect of age on relative timing variability and transfer

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential qualitative differences in relative timing across age both within and across speed conditions. Forty right-handed males performed 48 trials of a five-component coincident-timing task at one speed and then 16 more at a different speed. The independent variables were age (5-7, 8-10, 11-13 years, and adult), speed (slow and fast), and block order (training and transfer). The results indicated that within-speed relative timing consistency improved with increasing age for movement-time and pause-time components, while across-speed transfer improved with age only for pause time. movement velocity emerged as a more stable timing parameter than movement time across speeds for all groups. The last movement-time component correlated highly with the total response times, suggesting that coincident-timing accuracy was controlled to a large degree by a final, fine-tuning correction. These results imply that developmental deficits in relative timing increase the attention demands of a given task, thereby reducing a child's capacity to concurrently control his movements and monitor events in the environment.     

The effect of interstimulus procedures on salt taste intensity functions

Taste intensity functions were constructed for the salt taste, using variations of the method of direct magnitude estimation, to study the effects of adaptation to residuals from prior tastings. The prediction that mouthrinsing would reduce residuals, lower the level of adaptation, and thus yield lower exponents was confirmed. The effect of the residuals tended to be reduced, tiowever, when the power functions were adjusted for such threshold changes. Power function deviations from linearity were also discussed. The literature on intensity scaling for the salt taste was examined and seen to support these findings. It was concluded that the interstimulus procedure, by altering residual stimulus levels, played a major role in determining salt taste intensity functions.     

The moderating effect of trigger intensity on triggered displaced aggression

Many instances of aggression result in excessive retaliation in response to a seemingly trivial triggering event. The triggered displaced aggression paradigm (TDA; Miller, Pedersen, Earleywine, & Pollock, 2003) provides an experimental vehicle for exploring such occurrences. Participants were either provoked or not and were subsequently exposed to a neutral, mild, or moderately strong triggering event from a second bogus participant. Consistent with TDA theory (Miller et al., 2003), disjunctively escalated aggressive behavior occurred only among previously provoked participants when responding to the mild triggering event, but not the moderately strong or neutral trigger. Independent of provocation, the neutral triggering event elicited very low levels of aggression, whereas the moderately strong trigger elicited moderate levels of aggression. Implications for instances of real world aggression are discussed.     

Online recognition of music is influenced by relative and absolute pitch information

Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding.