Archives of Acoustics, 18, 4, pp. 515-523, 1993

Categorical perception in absolute pitch

A. RAKOWSKI
Chopin Academy of Music
Poland

Three music students, possessing of absolute pitch, participated in an experiment of categorical identification of two adjacent musical pitch categories A#_4 and B_4. Next, they also participated in the experiment in which their ability to differenciate between two tone pulses separated by frequency level distance of 25 cents was tested. When ABX procedure was used with the tone-pulse length reduced to 20msec and the interstimulus interval extended to 10sec, the between-category discrimination in two sucjects markedly exceeded the within-category discrimination, which signalled the existence of categorical perception.
Full Text: PDF
Copyright © Polish Academy of Sciences & Institute of Fundamental Technological Research (IPPT PAN).

References

A. BACHEM, Various types of absolute pitch, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 9, 146-151, (1937).

E.M. BURNS, W.D. WARD, Categorical perception - phenomenon or epiphenomenon: Evidence from experiments in the perception of melodic musical intervals, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 63, 456-468, (1978).

E.F. CLARKE, Categorical rhythm perception: An ecological perspective. In: A. Gabrielsson (Ed.), Action and Perception in Rhythm and Music. Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm, 19-33, (1987).

J.E. CUTTING, B.S. ROSEN, C.F. FOARD, Perceptual categories for music-like sounds; implications for theories of speech perception. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 361-378, (1976).