Re: absolute pitch & animals

[Robert Zatorre <robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List

I think one has to be very careful when saying that someone or some
species "has absolute pitch". This can mean various different
things which are not equivalent. There is lots of evidence that certain
animals use absolute pitch cues (for example, a generalization gradient
to respond to a learned fixed pitch; or that vocalizations have a very
stable pitch structure). This is not necessarily functionally equivalent
to the human musician's ability to identify, by verbal labelling or
otherwise, a large range of pitches. Taken to its absurd extreme,
according some of these definitions, my refrigerator at home "has
absolute pitch" since it hums loudly every evening at something
pretty close to a b-flat!

I always liked the idea, described by Ward among many others, that the
cognitively interesting aspect of the AP phenomenon was the ability to
have a large number (up to 60 or so) of fixed categories along the pitch
continuum. This is very different from what usually happens with other
perceptual continua, such as loudness, intensity, weight, or hue, where
the limit is typically on the order of 7-10 categories (Miller's magic
number). In other words, everyone has the ability to make absolute
judgments, but they are very broad, whereas true AP people apparently
possess very narrow perceptual categories, that they can then learn to
attach a label to.

I know of no animal evidence showing that any species can be trained to
pick out one of, say, 50 distinct responses to each of 50 distinct tone
frequencies. This is precisely what the best human AP possessors can do
quickly and without much effort. Only such a demonstration would
constitute evidence that an animal possessed an analogous cognitive
ability as the human AP musicians. Until someone shows this, we should be
careful about making generalizations across species. I am NOT saying that
studying these phenomena in animals is not useful--quite the contrary I
think it's quite important. I am only arguing that the phenomena should
not be assumed to be identical, especially when behaviorally they are not
the same at all.

Robert

PS This whole thread started when someone asked a perfectly reasonable
and specific question about sex distribution in absolute pitch. Did
anyone ever answer that, or is all this free-association that I am also
contributing to all we got out of it? Perhaps the list would work better
if we all refrained from giving random opinions, and stuck to addressing
specific issues. Or am I just being grumpy?

PPS For further reading (of my views, anyhow): Zatorre, R.J. (2003)
Absolute pitch: a model for understanding the influence of genes and
development on neural and cognitive function. Nature Neuroscience,
6, 692-695.


At 09:45 29/04/04 +0200, Leon van Noorden wrote:

Annemarie,
I completely agree with you that verbal labeling of the aboslute pitch categories is only one stage in the perception process. These labels depend on what you have learned when you were young. I see it more as a way to access the outcome of the absolute pitch processor. It would be interesting to know what are the labels the animals attach here. What do they imagine when they hear a certain absolut pitch object?
Do they "see" a big or small ape? or a "red" or "green" goldfinch?
Leon

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----

Van: AUDITORY Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA]namens Annemarie Seither-Preisler

Verzonden: 29 apr 04 9:09

Aan: AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA

Onderwerp: absolute pitch

If absolute pitch were a phenomenon exclusively due to learned verbal categories, how would one explain the finding that several investigated animal species have absolute pitch?

 

(a) songbirds

Hulse, S. H. & Cynx, J. Relative pitch perception is constrained by absolute pitch in songbirds (Mimus, Molothrus, and Sturnus). J Comp Psychol 99, 176-196 (1985).

(b) monkeys and rats

D'Amato, M. R. A search for tonal pattern perception in cebus monkeys: Why monkeys can’t hum a tune. Music Perception 4, 453-480 (1988).

(c) echolocating bats

Schmidt, S., Preisler, A. & Sedlmeier, H. in Advances in Hear Res (eds. Manley, G. A., Klump, G., Köppl, C., Fastl, H. & Oeckinghaus, H.) 374-382 (World Scientific Publishers, Singapore, 1994).

Preisler, A. & Schmidt, S. in 23rd Göttingen Neurobiology Conference (eds. Elsner, N. & Menzel, R.) 309 (Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, 1995).

 

The findings by Saffran appear to be very revealing in this respect, showing that young infants at the age of 8 months, unlike adults, primarily rely on absolute pitch cues.

 

Saffran, J. R. & Griepentrog, G. J. Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: evidence for developmental reorganization. Dev Psychol 37, 74-85 (2001).

Saffran, J. R. Musical Learning and Language Development. Ann NY Acad Sci 999, 397-401 (2003).

 

In summary, these results suggest that absolute pitch is a primary perceptual mode that is heavily superseded by relative pitch (probably in the course of language acquisition).  Early musical training or learning a tonal language like Thai or Japanese may help to prevent this edging out-process, with the consequence that certain subjects retain the ability to perceive absolute pitch throughout life. Verbal categorizations of notes may be helpful in this respect, but it would be misleading to take them for the main underlying cause.

 

Annemarie Seither-Preisler

 

 

Dr. Annemarie Seither-Preisler

 

Universitätsklinikum Münster

Abteilung für Experimentelle Audiologie

Klinik und Poliklinik für Hals-, Nasen- und Ohrenheilkunde

Kardinal von Galen Ring 10

D-48149 Münster

 

Tel.: 0049 / 251 / 83 / 56817

Fax: 0049 / 251 / 83 / 56882

Email: preisler@uni-muenster.de

 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Robert J. Zatorre, Ph.D.

Montreal Neurological Institute

3801 University St.

Montreal, QC Canada H3A 2B4

phone: 1-514-398-8903

fax: 1-514-398-1338

web site: www.zlab.mcgill.ca