Subject: Re: The climb of absolute pitch From: Martin Braun <nombraun@xxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 12:17:54 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Yes, in humans generally, and probably in most mammals, pitch rise usually is a more important signal than pitch fall. It often is a sign of stress or alarm, whereas pitch fall often is a sign of the opposite. Chuck, was there no upward-downward difference in the RP musicians at all? Or was the effect just weaker than in the AP musicians? Martin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leon van Noorden" <leonvannoorden@xxxxxxxx> To: <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 9:59 AM Subject: Re: The climb of absolute pitch > 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