Re: AW: absolute pitch & animals

[Robert Zatorre <robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxxx>]

> The animals were trained
> to an ultrasonic reference frequency (23 kHz) and learned in a
> 2-AFC-paradigm to categorize pure tones of varying frequencies to be
> higher or lower than this reference. After the training period, the
> reference was omitted and the animals classified the comparison tones
> only based on the memorized reference. Their performance was
> remarkable: 
>
> Depending on the
> animals, the absolute pitch discrimination threshold was between
> 0.4 and 0.8 percent. This is slightly worse than human successive pitch
> discrimination thresholds (about 0.2 0.6 percent) in the best hearing
> range under relative pitch conditions. The experiment lasted for
> about half a year and during that period the animals fully retained this
> high discrimination performance.
>
> Could humans with AP
> achieve such fine discrimination
> thresholds?

I don't know--interesting question. There are surely data out there
speaking to this. But note that in this example animals were trained to
ONE reference tone only. In order to demonstrate a phenomenon homologous
to AP in humans they would have to be able to respond to several dozen
reference tones with several dozen unique response categories.

In fact, musicians without AP can sometimes achieve what may be called
pseudo-AP in that they develop a long-term memory for a single reference
note (e.g., many orchestra musicians can reliably identify A 440 because
they've heard it so often). This may be similar to what the bats are able
to do.

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Robert J. Zatorre, Ph.D.

Montreal Neurological Institute

3801 University St.

Montreal, QC Canada H3A 2B4

phone: 1-514-398-8903

fax: 1-514-398-1338

web site: www.zlab.mcgill.ca