David A. Ross - david.a.ross@yale.edu
Yale School of Medicine
Dept. of Diagnostic Radiology
Box 208043, New Haven, CT 06520
John C. Gore
Vanderbilt Univ. Medical Ctr., Nashville, TN
Lawrence E. Marks
John B. Pierce Lab., New Haven, CT 06519
Popular version of paper 4aPPb4
Presented Thursday morning, May 1, 2003
145th ASA Meeting, Nashville, TN
Many famous musicians (e.g. Mozart and Beethoven) have possessed a talent called "perfect pitch." Traditionally, this has been defined as the ability to recognize or produce a musical note without first hearing a tone with known pitch. This ability is remarkable and uncommon.
Whether perfect pitch is learned early in life or inherited has been a matter of great controversy. Historically, it has been difficult to address this question because conventional tests (such as note naming) have all required subjects to possess some amount of musical training.
We have developed a new paradigm for identifying people with "perfect pitch" that is independent of their musical ability. With it, they demonstrate that musical training is not required for the development of this skill.
Further, they have proposed that individuals with "perfect pitch" may more accurately be divided into two distinct groups: (1) possessors of true absolute pitch (AP), who automatically recognize the pitch of any tone they hear; and (2) possessors of heightened tonal memory (HTM), who identify tones by comparing them to a memory map of musical tones.
According to this model, the ability of people with HTM (but not AP) to identify tones should depend strongly on the physical properties of the tones. Ross and colleagues conducted a series of experiments designed to test this hypothesis directly. Individuals claiming to have "perfect pitch" were recruited and initially classified as having AP or HTM.
Consistent with this model, the two groups differed significantly in their responses to various types of tones, suggesting that they may use different mechanisms to identify tones. These results may help reconcile the long-standing controversy between early learning and genetic theories of perfect pitch.