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.     

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.     

Pitch discrimination without awareness in congenital amusia: Evidence from event-related potentials

Congenital amusia is a lifelong disorder characterized by a difficulty in perceiving and producing music despite normal intelligence and hearing. Behavioral data have indicated that it originates from a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination, and is expressed by the absence of a P3b event-related brain response for pitch differences smaller than a semitone and a bigger N2b–P3b brain response for large pitch differences as compared to controls. However, it is still unclear why the amusic brain overreacts to large pitch changes. Furthermore, another electrophysiological study indicates that the amusic brain can respond to changes in melodies as small as a quarter-tone, without awareness, by exhibiting a normal mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response. Here, we re-examine the event-related N2b–P3b components with the aim to clarify the cause of the larger amplitude observed by Peretz, Brattico, and Tervaniemi (2005), by experimentally matching the number of deviants presented to the controls according to the number of deviants detected by amusics. We also re-examine the MMN component as well as the N1 in an acoustical context to investigate further the pitch discrimination deficit underlying congenital amusia. In two separate conditions, namely ignore and attend, we measured the MMN, the N1, the N2b and the P3b to tones that deviated by an eight of a tone (25 cents) or whole tone (200 cents) from a repeated standard tone. The results show a normal MMN, a seemingly normal N1, a normal P3b for the 200 cents pitch deviance, and no P3b for the small 25 cents pitch differences in amusics. These results indicate that the amusic brain responds to small pitch differences at a pre-attentive level of perception, but is unable to detect consciously those same pitch deviances at a later attentive level. The results are consistent with previous MRI and fMRI studies indicating that the auditory cortex of amusic individuals is functioning normally.     

Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch

Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.     

How big is this sound? Crossmodal association between pitch and size in infants

We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants’ sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.     

The representation of pitch in auditory imagery: Evidence from S-R compatibility and distance effects

In three experiments we explored the nature of representations constructed during the perception and imagination of pitch. We employed a same–different task to eliminate the influence of nonauditory information and to minimise use of cognitive strategies on auditory imagery. A reference tone of frequency 1000, 1500, or 2000 Hz, or an imagined tone of a pitch indicated by a visual cue, was followed by a comparison tone (1000, 1500, or 2000 Hz) to which either a speeded same or different response was required. In separate experiments, same–different judgements were mapped to vertically (Experiments 1 and 2) and horizontally arranged responses (Experiment 3). Judgements of tones closer in pitch yielded longer reaction times and higher error rates than more distant tones, indicating a pitch distance effect for perceptual and imagery tasks alike. In addition, in the imagery task, same–different responses were faster when low-pitched tones demanded a bottom or left key response and high-pitched tones a top or right response than vice versa, suggesting that pitch is coded spatially. Together, these behavioural effects support the assumption that both perceived and imagined pitch are translated into an analogical representation in the spatial domain.     

Cross-cultural perspectives on pitch memory

We examined effects of age and culture on children's memory for the pitch level of familiar music. Canadian 9- and 10-year-olds distinguished the original pitch level of familiar television theme songs from foils that were pitch-shifted by one semitone, whereas 5- to 8-year-olds failed to do so (Experiment 1). In contrast, Japanese 5- and 6-year-olds distinguished the pitch-shifted foils from the originals, performing significantly better than same-age Canadian children (Experiment 2). Moreover, Japanese 6-year-olds were more accurate than their 5-year-old counterparts. These findings challenge the prevailing view of enhanced pitch memory during early life. We consider factors that may account for Japanese children's superior performance such as their use of a pitch accent language (Japanese) rather than a stress accent language (English) and their experience with musical pitch labels.     

Global and local pitch perception in children with developmental dyslexia

This study investigated global versus local pitch pattern perception in children with dyslexia aged between 8 and 11 years. Children listened to two consecutive 4-tone pitch sequences while performing a same/different task. On the different trials, sequences either preserved the contour (local condition) or they violated the contour (global condition). Compared to normally developing children, dyslexics showed robust pitch perception deficits in the local but not the global condition. This finding was replicated in a simple pitch direction task, which minimizes sequencing and short term memory. Results are consistent with a left-hemisphere deficit in dyslexia because local pitch changes are supposedly processed by the left hemisphere, whereas global pitch changes are processed by the right hemisphere. The present data suggest a link between impaired pitch processing and abnormal phonological development in children with dyslexia, which makes pitch pattern processing a potent tool for early diagnosis and remediation of dyslexia.     

A cross-cultural study of infant temperament: Predicting preschool effortful control in the United States of America and Russia

Effortful control (EC) has been conceptualized as a dimension of temperament related to self-regulation and associated with the development of executive attention skills. Research has focused on documenting the development of EC, but there has been little systematic study of its precursors. The present study was designed to examine infant temperament characteristics as potential predictors of EC in the toddler/preschool period across two countries: Russia and the USA. Specifically, contributions of negative emotionality (NE), positive affectivity/surgency (PAS), and regulatory capacity/orienting (RCO) measured in the first year of life were expected to explain EC in the preschool period. For the US sample, toddler NE, infant PAS and RCO explained significant amounts of EC variance, whereas infant RCO was the single significant predictor of later EC in the Russian sample. Analyses with the combined sample provided an opportunity to evaluate temperament-by-culture interactions, one of which (PAS×Culture) reached statistical significance. Follow-up analyses indicated that higher levels of infant PAS were related to higher EC scores for US children only, whereas for the Russian youth preschool EC did not vary as a function of infant PAS. Results of this study support the importance of early appearing regulation in contributing to the development of EC and illustrate the value of cross-cultural longitudinal research.     

The role of timing deviations and target position uncertainty on temporal attending in a serial auditory pitch discrimination task

Listeners were presented with sequences of tones that ascended in semitone intervals. On each trial a single target tone in the sequence was displaced in pitch, and listeners were required to indicate whether the target tone was higher or lower than its normal pitch. Task constraints, specifically target serial position uncertainty and the probabilistic relationship between time deviations and target tones, were varied in order to determine the impact of task constraints on temporal attending strategy. When listeners had no advance knowledge of the serial position of the target, and early and late targets provided information regarding target serial position, performance was better for early and late target trials than for on-time target trials (Experiment 1). When listeners had no advance knowledge of the serial position of the target, and early and late temporal deviations provided no information regarding target serial position, performance for late target trials was superior to that for early and on-time target trials (Experiment 2). Finally, when target serial position uncertainty was eliminated, performance was equivalent across all three levels of target timing (early, on time, late). The results indicate that performance profiles based on stimulus timing properties are affected by various task constraints as well as by stimulus properties.     

Brain correlates of early auditory processing are attenuated by expectations for time and pitch

The present study investigated how auditory processing is modulated by expectations for time and pitch by analyzing reaction times and event-related potentials (ERPs). In two experiments, tone sequences were presented to the participants, who had to discriminate whether the last tone of the sequence contained a short gap or was continuous (Experiment 1: go/nogo, Experiment 2: choice reaction). Expectations were induced by varying the temporal and pitch regularity of the sequence. Results were consistent across both experiments. Expectations for both time and pitch were associated with faster responding. Both temporal and pitch expectations led to an attenuation of the auditory N1, thus indicating a modulation of early, perceptual processing by temporal and pitch expectations. Effects of temporal expectations were also evident in a P300-like deflection, suggesting that temporal expectations also affect decision- or response-related processing stages.     

Left-hemisphere activation is associated with enhanced vocal pitch error detection in musicians with absolute pitch

The ability to process auditory feedback for vocal pitch control is crucial during speaking and singing. Previous studies have suggested that musicians with absolute pitch (AP) develop specialized left-hemisphere mechanisms for pitch processing. The present study adopted an auditory feedback pitch perturbation paradigm combined with ERP recordings to test the hypothesis whether the neural mechanisms of the left-hemisphere enhance vocal pitch error detection and control in AP musicians compared with relative pitch (RP) musicians and non-musicians (NM). Results showed a stronger N1 response to pitch-shifted voice feedback in the right-hemisphere for both AP and RP musicians compared with the NM group. However, the left-hemisphere P2 component activation was greater in AP and RP musicians compared with NMs and also for the AP compared with RP musicians. The NM group was slower in generating compensatory vocal reactions to feedback pitch perturbation compared with musicians, and they failed to re-adjust their vocal pitch after the feedback perturbation was removed. These findings suggest that in the earlier stages of cortical neural processing, the right hemisphere is more active in musicians for detecting pitch changes in voice feedback. In the later stages, the left-hemisphere is more active during the processing of auditory feedback for vocal motor control and seems to involve specialized mechanisms that facilitate pitch processing in the AP compared with RP musicians. These findings indicate that the left hemisphere mechanisms of AP ability are associated with improved auditory feedback pitch processing during vocal pitch control in tasks such as speaking or singing.     

The role of the auditory brainstem in processing linguistically-relevant pitch patterns

Historically, the brainstem has been neglected as a part of the brain involved in language processing. We review recent evidence of language-dependent effects in pitch processing based on comparisons of native vs. nonnative speakers of a tonal language from electrophysiological recordings in the auditory brainstem. We argue that there is enhancing of linguistically-relevant pitch dimensions or features well before the auditory signal reaches the cerebral cortex. We propose that long-term experience with a tone language sharpens the tuning characteristics of neurons along the pitch axis with enhanced sensitivity to linguistically-relevant, rapidly changing sections of pitch contours. Though not specific to a speech context, experience-dependent brainstem mechanisms for pitch representation are clearly sensitive to particular aspects of pitch contours that native speakers of a tone language have been exposed to. Such experience-dependent effects on lower-level sensory processing are compatible with more integrated, hierarchically organized pathways to language and the brain.     

Memory for pitch in congenital amusia: Beyond a fine-grained pitch discrimination problem

Congenital amusia is a disorder that affects the perception and production of music. While amusia has been associated with deficits in pitch discrimination, several reports suggest that memory deficits also play a role. The present study investigated short-term memory span for pitch-based and verbal information in 14 individuals with amusia and matched controls. Analogous adaptive-tracking procedures were used to generate tone and digit spans using stimuli that exceeded psychophysically measured pitch perception thresholds. Individuals with amusia had significantly smaller tone spans, whereas their digits spans were a similar size to those of controls. An automated operation span task was used to determine working memory capacity. Working memory deficits were seen in only a small subgroup of individuals with amusia. These findings support the existence of a pitch-specific component within short-term memory and suggest that congenital amusia is more than a disorder of fine-grained pitch discrimination.     

An investigation of spatial representation of pitch in individuals with congenital amusia

Spatial representation of pitch plays a central role in auditory processing. However, it is unknown whether impaired auditory processing is associated with impaired pitch–space mapping. Experiment 1 examined spatial representation of pitch in individuals with congenital amusia using a stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) task. For amusic and non-amusic participants, pitch classification was faster and more accurate when correct responses involved a physical action that was spatially congruent with the pitch height of the stimulus than when it was incongruent. However, this spatial representation of pitch was not as stable in amusic individuals, revealed by slower response times when compared with control individuals. One explanation is that the SRC effect in amusics reflects a linguistic association, requiring additional time to link pitch height and spatial location. To test this possibility, Experiment 2 employed a colour-classification task. Participants judged colour while ignoring a concurrent pitch by pressing one of two response keys positioned vertically to be congruent or incongruent with the pitch. The association between pitch and space was found in both groups, with comparable response times in the two groups, suggesting that amusic individuals are only slower to respond to tasks involving explicit judgments of pitch.     

Memory for the pitch of a tone

Observers attempted to detect the presence of a pitch dirference between two successive tones. The percentage of correct judgments was equivalent for tones separated by 95, 4.5, and 8.9 sec. There was a general increase in reports of a pitch difference with increased intertone interval, which is interpreted as arising from hypothesized shifts in the neural locus of the first stimulus during the intertone interval.     

Memory for the pitch of a tone

Observers attempted to detect the presence of a pitch difference between two successive tones. The percentage of correct judgments was equivalent for tones separated by .95, 4.5, and 8.9 sec. There was a general increase in reports of a pitch difference with increased intertone interval, which is interpreted as arising from hypothesized shifts in the neural locus of the first stimulus during the intertone interval.     

The brain generates its own sentence melody: a Gestalt phenomenon in speech perception

Brain processes underlying spoken language comprehension comprise auditory encoding, prosodic analysis and linguistic evaluation. Auditory encoding usually activates both hemispheres while language-specific stages are lateralized: analysis of prosodic cues are right-lateralized while linguistic evaluation is left-lateralized. Here, we investigated to what extent the absence of prosodic information influences lateralization. MEG brain-responses indicated that syntactic violations lead to early bi-lateral brain responses for syntax violations. When the pitch of sentences was flattened to diminish prosodic cues, the brain's syntax response was lateralized to the right hemisphere, indicating that the missing pitch was generated automatically by the brain when it was absent. This represents a Gestalt phenomenon, since we perceive more than is actually presented.     

Absolute pitch in boreal chickadees and humans: Exceptions that test a phylogenetic rule

This research examined generality of the phylogenetic rule that birds discriminate frequency ranges more accurately than mammals. Human absolute pitch chroma possessors accurately tracked transitions between frequency ranges. Independent tests showed that they used note naming (pitch chroma) to remap the tones into ranges; neither possessors nor nonpossessors were accurate at octave (pitch height) naming. Boreal chickadees discriminated frequency ranges less accurately than other birds; they tracked reward across several lower frequency ranges but failed at frequencies over 4000 Hz. The results revealed the error of describing species differences solely in terms of their discrimination of frequency ranges. Exceptions to the rule disappear when the rule is restated in terms of underlying mechanism: birds are superior to mammals in the ability to use absolute pitch height perception to discriminate pitches and ranges of pitches.     

Serial order processing in human infants and the role of multisensory redundancy

Perception, production, and understanding of sequences is fundamental to human behavior and depends, in large part, on the ability to detect serial order. Despite the importance of this issue across many domains of human functioning, the development of serial order skills has been neglected in developmental studies. The current article reviews evidence that the basic temporal and spatiotemporal skills that are necessary for the development of serial order skills emerge early in human development. The article then presents recent evidence from the authors laboratory showing that serial order perceptual skills emerge at the same time and improve rapidly. Consistent with a multisensory redundancy view of perception, when serial order perceptual abilities first emerge in infancy, they depend critically on the redundant specification of sequences in both the auditory and visual modalities. The findings suggest that infants ability to perceive the surface serial order characteristics of sequentially organized events provides the necessary antecedents to the development of more complex serial order skills that ultimately enable us to extract meanings from sequentially organized events and perform complex sequential actions.Edited by: Marie-Hélène Giard and Mark Wallace