The only suggestion I have on this that in speech (at least in Dutch)
the - un-accented - pitch goes gradually down during a sentence.
Listeners are usually not aware of this.
Against this background a rise of 100 cents is more of a signal dan going
down 100 cents.
That AP have a stronger effect could indicate that they have a stronger
connection
to the pitch of their voice, which is proposed in some theories.
Regards,
Leon
On 04 Dec 2012, at 23:38, Chuck Larson wrote:
To all of you experts on absolute pitch, I have a question for you.
I've been following your discussion on AP musicians in hopes that I would
learn something from you that would explain some of our EEG results. We
have tested musicians with absolute pitch and relative pitch on a
vocalization experiment in which they heard their voice (through
headphones) either shift up 100 cents or down 100 cents. The shifting
was
done with a harmonizer. We also recorded ERPs triggered by the onset of
the pitch-shift stimulus. In general the musicians with AP had larger
magnitude left hemisphere potentials (P200) than did the relative pitch
musicians. However, we also noted that for the UPWARD pitch-shift
stimulus, the P200 in the AP musicians, in contrast to the RP musicians,
was more strongly left lateralized than for DOWNWARD pitch shifts. I am
trying to figure out why an upward shift in voice pitch auditory feedback
in AP musicians would show stronger left hemisphere activation than a
downward pitch shift.
I'D greatly appreciate any ideas you may have on this.
Thanks,
Chuck