infants and pitch

[Susan Hall <susanhal@xxxxxx>]

Title: infants and pitch

Annemarie Seither-Preisler wrote:

> 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 that is heavily superseded by relative pitch (probably in the course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.

A paper by Sandra Trehub suggests that infants are also sensitive to relative pitch:

Trehub SE (2001) Musical predispositions in infancy. Ann NY Acad Sci, 930: 1-16 2001.

In searching for this ref, I just found another of Trehub's demonstrating the ability of non-musicians to discriminate recordings of instrumental themes from popular TV shows in their correct key, from those transposed up or down by only one or two semi-tones. They conclude that "Adults' reportedly poor memory for pitch is likely to be a by-product of their inability to name isolated pitches."

Schellenberg, EG and Trehub, SE (2003) Good pitch memory is widespread. Pyschological Science, 14 (3): 262-266.

Susan Hall

Dalhousie University