Re: Height and pitch

[John Neuhoff <jneuhoff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would agree that the relationship between pitch and vertical height
probably has a lot to do music education and expertise. However, I would be
skeptical about this being germane only to western music. In fact, we have
shown that many western listeners without musical training do not have a
good grasp of what "up" and "down" actually mean as they pertain to pitch.
See: 

Neuhoff, J.G., Knight, R. & Wayand, J. (2002). Musicians, Non-Musicians, and
the Perception of Pitch Change: Which Way is Up?  Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference on Auditory Display, Kyoto, Japan. 

http://pages.wooster.edu/jneuhoff/PitchChange.pdf

Also, there is a smaller population of listeners for which any type of
musical training would not appear to provide any benefit.  

See: 
I. Peretz, J. Ayotte, R. Zatorre, J. Mehler, P. Ahad, V. Penhune, and B.
Jutras, "Congenital Amusia: A Disorder of Fine-Grained Pitch
Discrimination," Neuron, vol. 33, pp. 185-191, 2002.

-John
________________________________
John G. Neuhoff
Department of Psychology
The College of Wooster 
Wooster, OH 44691
Phone: 330-263-2475 
Fax: 928-244-5577

http://pages.wooster.edu/jneuhoff/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: AUDITORY Research in Auditory Perception 
> [mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA] On Behalf Of Andrew D Lyons
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 7:39 PM
> To: AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
> Subject: Height and pitch
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have come across a paper that suggests that the 
> relationship between pitch and vertical height has more to do 
> with western music education than some universal spatial 
> cognitive strategy:
> 
> Walker, R. The effects of culture, environment, age, and 
> musical training on choice of visual metaphors for sound. 
> Perception & Psychophysics, 42(5):491--502, November 1987.
> 
> Can anybody comment on the idea that cultures that are not 
> educated in the western music tradition tend to make random 
> selections in relation to the relationship between pitch and height?
> 
> Cheers
> 
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> Andrew D Lyons | Time Space Texture | http://www.tstex.com 
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