Diana Deutsch

Tones and numbers: Specificity of interference in immediate memory.

Recognition of the pitch of a tone was severely disrupted by the incorporation of six other tones during a 5-second retention interval, even though the intervening tones could be ignored. However, the requirement to recall six numbers spoken at equal loudness during the identical retention interval produced only a minimum decrement in the same pitch-recognition task. Further, the requirement to remember the tone produced no decrement in recall of the numbers. It is concluded that immediate memory for pitch is subject to a large interference effect which is highly specific in nature and which is not due to some limitation in general short-term memory capacity or to a distraction of attention.

The processing of structured and unstructured tonal sequences

The recall of hierarchically organized tonal sequences was investigated in two experiments. An adaptation of the technique of melodic dictation was employed, in which musically trained listeners notated each sequence after it was presented. Strong effects of sequence structure were obtained. Sequences whose tonal structure could be parsimoniously encoded in hierarchical fashion were recalled with a high level of accuracy. Sequences that could not be parsimoniously encoded produced substantially more errors in recall. Temporal segmentation was found to have a substantial effect on performance, which reflected grouping by temporal proximity regardless of tonal structure. The results provide evidence for the hypothesis that we encode tonal materials by inferring sequence structures and alphabets at different hierarchical levels, together with their rules of combination.

The Processing of Pitch Combinations

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the processing of pitch combinations. It examines the ways in which pitch combinations are abstracted by the perceptual system. First, it inquires into the types of abstraction that give rise to the perception of local features, such as intervals, chords, and pitch classes. Such features can be considered analogous to those of orientation and angle size in vision. Other low-level abstractions result in the perception of global features, such as contour. Next, the chapter considers how combinations of features are abstracted to give rise to perceptual equivalences and similarities. Then it examines how these higher level abstractions are themselves combined according to various rules. The distinction between abstractions that are formed passively from “bottom up” and those that occur from “top down” is important in music. Both types of processes play important roles in musical shape analysis. These findings have contributed to the groundwork on which an understanding of the processing of pitch combinations can be based.

Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: Prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical perioda)

Absolute pitch is extremely rare in the U.S. and Europe; this rarity has so far been unexplained. This paper reports a substantial difference in the prevalence of absolute pitch in two normal populations, in a large-scale study employing an on-site test, without self-selection from within the target populations. Music conservatory students in the U.S. and China were tested. The Chinese subjects spoke the tone language Mandarin, in which pitch is involved in conveying the meaning of words. The American subjects were nontone language speakers. The earlier the age of onset of musical training, the greater the prevalence of absolute pitch; however, its prevalence was far greater among the Chinese than the U.S. students for each level of age of onset of musical training. The findings suggest that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for acquisition of features of their native language.

The generation of two isochronous sequences in parallel

Subjects were presented with two parallel pulse trains through earphones, one to each ear. The pulse trains were isochronous, and the durations of the intervals associated with the right and left trains were systematically varied, so as to give rise to both simple rhythms and polyrhythms. The subjects were required to tap with the right hand in synchrony with the train delivered to the right ear, and to tap with the left hand in synchrony with the train delivered to the left ear. Accuracy of performance in polyrhythm contexts was substantially lower than in simple rhythm contexts, and decreased with an increase in the complexity of the associated polyrhythm. It was concluded that the performer develops a representation of the pattern as an integrated whole, and that performance accuracy is inversely related to pattern complexity.

Octave generalization and tune recognition

An experiment was performed to investigate whether or not we are able to use octave generalization in recognizing tunes. The firat half of the tune “Yankee Doodle” wu chosen as the test sequence. This was universally recognized when played in any one of three octaves. However, when the sequence was played in identical fashion. except that each note was chosen randomly from one of the same three octaves, the percentage correct recognition was not significantly different from that obtained when the sequence was played as a series of clicks with the pitch information omitted but the rhythmic information retained. It is concluded that tune recognition takes place along a channel which is independent from that which gives rise to octave generalization. The relevance of this finding to the theory of music recognition proposed by Deutsch (1969) is discussed.

Two‐channel listening to musical scales

Ss listened to a dichotic tonal sequence consisting of the repetitive presentation of the C major scale with successive tones alternating from ear to ear. The scale was presented simultaneously in both ascending and descending form, such that when a component of the ascending scale was in one ear, a component of the descending scale was in the other, and vice versa. All Ss channeled this sequence by frequency range: no S channeled by ear of input, and none reported a full ascending or descending scale. Various illusory percepts were obtained, which varied in correlation with the handedness of the listener. Right‐handers tended to perceive the upper tones of the dichotic sequence as emanating from the right earphone and the lower tones from the left, and to maintain this percept when the earphones were places in reverse position. Left‐handers as a group did not display the same localization tendency.Subject Classification: 65.22, 65.54, 65.62; 75.10.

Mapping of Interactions in the Pitch Memory Store

A technique obtaining a precise mapping of interactive effects in the pitch memory store is described. Subjects were required to compare two tones for pitch when these were separated by a 5-second interval during which six other tones were played. In the second serial position of the intervening sequence there was placed a tone whose pitch bore a critical relationship to the pitch of the first test tone. When the critical intervening tone was identical in pitch to the first test tone, memory facilitation was produced. As the separation in pitch between these two tones increased, errors rose progressively, peaked at a separation of 2/3 tone, and declined roughly to baseline at a whole tone separation. It is concluded that the pitch memory store is arranged logarithmically in a highly ordered and specific fashion.

The Tritone Paradox: An Influence of Language on Music Perception

The tritone paradox is produced when two tones that are related by a half- octave (or tritone) are presented in succession. Each tone is composed of a set of octave- related harmonics, whose amplitudes are determined by a bell-shaped spectral envelope; thus the tones are clearly defined in terms of pitch class, but poorly defined in terms of height. When listeners judge whether such tone pairs form ascending or descending patterns, their judgments generally show systematic relationships to the positions of the tones along the pitch-class circle: Tones in one region of the circle are heard as higher and those in the opposite region are heard as lower. However, listeners disagree substantially as to whether a given tone pair forms an ascending or a descending pattern, and therefore as to which tones are heard as higher and which as lower. This paper demonstrates that the basis for the individual differences in perception of this musical pattern lies in the language spoken by the listener. Two groups of subjects made judgments of the tritone paradox. One group had grown up in California, and the other group had grown up in southern England. It was found that when the Californian group tended to hear the pattern as ascending the English group tended to hear it as descending, and when the Californian group tended to hear the pattern as descending the English group tended to hear it as ascending. This finding, coupled with the earlier results of Deutsch, North, and Ray (1990) that showed a correlate between perception of the tritone paradox and the pitch range of the listener9s spontaneous speaking voice, indicates strongly that the same, culturally acquired representation of pitch classes influences both speech production and perception of this musical pattern.

Absolute pitch among students in an American music conservatory: Association with tone language fluency.

Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to name a musical note in the absence of a reference note, is extremely rare in the U.S. and Europe, and its genesis is unclear. The prevalence of AP was examined among students in an American music conservatory as a function of age of onset of musical training, ethnicity, and fluency in speaking a tone language. Taking those of East Asian ethnicity, the performance level on a test of AP was significantly higher among those who spoke a tone language very fluently compared with those who spoke a tone language fairly fluently and also compared with those who were not fluent in speaking a tone language. The performance level of this last group did not differ significantly from that of Caucasian students who spoke only nontone language. Early onset of musical training was associated with enhanced performance, but this did not interact with the effect of language. Further analyses showed that the results could not be explained by country of early music education. The findings support the hypothesis that the acquisition of AP by tone language speakers involves the same process as occurs in the acquisition of a second tone language.