Discrimination of pitch contours by neonates

With the high-amplitude sucking procedure, newborns were presented with two lists of phonetically varied Japanese words differing in pitch contour. Discrimination of the lists was found, thus indicating that newborns are able to extract pitch contour information at the word level.     

The interdependence of pitch and temporal judgments by absolute pitch possessors

The auditory tau and the kappa effects show that there is time-pitch interdependence in our perception. Our judgments of pitch separation between two tones depend on the temporal interval between them (the auditory tau effect), and our judgments of the tones’ temporal interval depend on their pitch separation (the kappa effect). The mechanisms underlying this interdependence were investigated by studying the auditory tau and the kappa effect in three experiments. Comparisons were made between results obtained from subjects with absolute pitch and those who did not have absolute pitch, and two frequency ranges of pure tones (octave and whole-tone conditions) were selected. The procedures had been used in previous experiments (Shigeno, 1986), in which the auditory tau and the kappa effects were compared in speech and nonspeech stimuli. The present results demonstrate that the auditory tau effect does not occur when possessors of absolute pitch judge the closeness of stimuli in pitch, except when the stimulus continuum consists of tones that do not correspond to musical notes in the whole-tone condition. The kappa effect was obtained in the judgment of possessors of absolute pitch in both the octave and the whole-tone conditions. These findings suggest that the interaction between temporal interval and pitch judgment might be explained in terms of the two different memory modes for retaining the pitch of tones, and that these effects occur at the precategorical level.     

From the Balint method toward profession-related supervision

This paper focuses on Michael Balint's special application of psychoanalysis, originally conceived as a training of doctors. Then the attempt is made to discover indirectly, since Balint never described his method in context, what he thought mattered in terms of method. Besides Balint's own contributions, those of his own staff are also consulted as well as the cultural background of the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock Institute. Then the further developments of the Balint method in the German-speaking world are presented. At the center are the special features of the method: (a) the atmosphere, (b) the narrator's contribution, (c) listening and reactions of the members of the group, (d) the unconscious enactments in transference and countertransference and the mirror-phenomena, respectively. Furthermore, the respective central points of reference are discussed from the viewpoint of communication science: (a) case, (b) group, and (c) institution. In conclusion and based on these foundations, the characteristics of the application of the Balint method in the form of a particular profession-related supervision are presented.     

Contributions of temporal and place cues in pitch perception in absolute pitch possessors

Pitch perception is determined by both place and temporal cues. To explore whether the manner in which these cues are used differs depending on absolute pitch capability, pitch identification experiments with and without pitch references were conducted for subjects with different absolute pitch capabilities and musical experience. Three types of stimuli were used to manipulate place and temporal cues separately: narrowband noises, which provide strong place cues but less salient temporal cues; iterated rippled noises, which provide strong temporal cues but less salient place cues; and sinusoidal tones, which provide both. The results indicated that absolute pitch possessors utilize temporal cues more effectively when they identify musical chroma With regard to the judgment of height, it was indicated that place cues play an important role for both absolute and nonabsolute pitch possessors.     

Intergroup Discrimination Involving Negative Outcomes and Self‐Esteem

Two studies examined the link between intergroup discrimination involving negative outcomes (i.e., removal of positive resources and allocation of noxious resources), global self‐esteem (GSE), and collective self‐esteem (CSE). Study 1 found that New Zealanders who took away more positive resources from out‐group than in‐group members experienced enhanced CSE, but not GSE. These findings were replicated in Study 2, with respect to the allocation of noxious resources (i.e., white noise). New Zealanders' GSE and CSE assessed prior to the allocation of noxious resources were unrelated to the subsequent allocation of white noise. The data are interpreted to indicate that intergroup discrimination involving negative outcomes leads to enhanced CSE. However, neither GSE nor CSE predict such discrimination.     

A computational procedure for the method of principal components

Ann-rowed correlation matrix may be thought of as an ellipsoid inn-dimensional space with its center at the origin. The principal components of the matrix are essentially the semi-axes of the ellipsoid. A direct and simple method of computing the lengths and directions of these semi-axes is presented.     

Discrimination in measures of knowledge monitoring accuracy

Knowledge monitoring predicts academic outcomes in many contexts. However, measures of knowledge monitoring accuracy are often incomplete. In the current study, a measure of students’ ability to discriminate known from unknown information as a component of knowledge monitoring was considered. Undergraduate students’ knowledge monitoring accuracy was assessed and used to predict final exam scores in a specific course. It was found that gamma, a measure commonly used as the measure of knowledge monitoring accuracy, accounted for a small, but significant amount of variance in academic performance whereas the discrimination and bias indexes combined to account for a greater amount of variance in academic performance.     

Discrimination learning with and without “errors”

Responses to S− (“errors”) are not a necessary condition for the formation of an operant discrimination of color. Errors do not occur if discrimination training begins early in conditioning and if S+ and S− initially differ with respect to brightness, duration and wavelength. After training starts, S−'s duration and brightness is progressively increased until S+ and S− differ only with respect to wavelength. Errors do occur if training starts after much conditioning in the presence of S+ has occurred or if S+ and S− differ only with respect to wavelength throughout training. Performance following discrimination learning without errors lacks three characteristics that are found following learning with errors. Only those birds that learned the discrimination with errors showed (1) “emotional” responses in the presence of S−, (2) an increase in the rate (or a decrease in the latency) of its response to S+, and (3) occasional bursts of responses to S−.     

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.     

Absolute and relative pitch: Global versus local processing of chords

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce notes without any reference note. An ongoing debate exists regarding the benefits or disadvantages of AP in processing music. One of the main issues in this context is whether the categorical perception of pitch in AP possessors may interfere in processing tasks requiring relative pitch (RP). Previous studies, focusing mainly on melodic and interval perception, have obtained inconsistent results. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of AP and RP separately, using isolated chords. Seventy-three musicians were categorized into four groups of high and low AP and RP, and were tested on two tasks: identifying chord types (Task 1), and identifying a single note within a chord (Task 2). A main effect of RP on Task 1 and an interaction between AP and RP in reaction times were found. On Task 2 main effects of AP and RP, and an interaction were found, with highest performance in participants with both high AP and RP. Results suggest that AP and RP should be regarded as two different abilities, and that AP may slow down reaction times for tasks requiring global processing.