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The development of absolute pitch:a theory concerning the roles ofmusic training at an earlydevelopmental age and individualcognitive style

155A R T I C L E

Psychology of Music

Psychology of Music

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Society for Education,

Music and Psychology

Research

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C H R I S T I N A S . C H I NU NI VE RS IT Y O F C AL IF OR NI A AT S AN TA C RU Z

A B S T R A C T Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to identify or sing pitches without an

external reference, is apparently neither completely inherited nor completely

teachable. Based on AP research findings and the literature on cognitive

development and cognitive style, this article proposes that the reason why some

musicians have AP and others do not depends on both the developmental age at

which music instruction began and individual differences in cognitive style;

children who had a particular type of music training before the ages of 5 to 7

years, and who have a more analytical cognitive style, are most likely to develop

AP. In light of the proposed explanation, there is discussion of a possible

neurological correlate of AP in the brain, and of research on AP with individualswho are blind, have Williams syndrome, or are autistic. Some directions for

future research are suggested.

K E Y W O R D S : absolute pitch (AP), cognitive development, cognitive style

For the past century, the study of absolute pitch (AP) has fascinated music

researchers (for a review, see Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993). Despite all this

research, we still remain unable to explain why some musical people who

have AP can identify or sing pitches in isolation, and other musically talented

individuals cannot do this without some point of reference. Research on AP

continues to serve at least two purposes. Suppose that, from a theoretical

point of view, only 1 in 10,000 people could perceive color, and only a minor-

ity of trained people could perceive color by comparing the color they are

looking at to a card with a single color they use as a reference. We would be

curious to discover how these possessors of absolute color developed their

ability, as well as how relative color possessors developed their ability. From a

pragmatic point of view, research on AP is useful because the more we under-

stand AP, the better will we be able to educate musicians by developing an

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AP-appropriate curriculum as an alternative to current methods of music

education based on relative pitch (Rakowski,1 personal communication).

Perhaps the most valuable objectives to guide future research are the twin

goals of illuminating the development of absolute pitch and relative pitch,

both of which play critical roles in the creation and appreciation of music.While acknowledging the importance of this broader perspective, the goal of

this article is to address the development of AP.

In the same way that many musicians have strong opinions about the

merit or irrelevance of possessing AP, AP researchers sometimes make strong

value judgments regarding the possession of AP. At one extreme, some

geneticists (Profita and Bidder, 1988) employ the term perfect pitch, which

carries the connotation that it is an amazing talent. At the other extreme,

Parncutt and Levitin (in press) prefer to embrace a non-elitist view of AP by

using the term tone-AP in order to distinguish it from piece-AP, claimingthat the ability to recognize or sing a song in the correct key is a form of AP.

In this article, the traditional term AP possessor, as opposed to tone-APer,

will be used to refer to precise AP possessors who can name over 90 percent

of isolated pitches correctly, and imprecise AP possessors will be used to

refer to those who can name around 5090 percent of isolated pitches cor-

rectly. Instead of viewing AP as the privilege of a genetically endowed gift or

as a mere extension of ordinary memory, this article suggests that whether

possessing AP is helpful or a hindrance depends on the musical context.

Although AP can be an asset when memorizing music or performing atonal20th-century music, AP can also be a liability when transposing music or

working under mistuned conditions (Bachem, 1955; Crutchfield, 1990;

Miyazaki, 1995).

Whereas many genetic researchers believe there is a genetic condition that

is necessary, but not sufficient, for the development of AP (Baharloo et al.,

1998, 2000; Gregersen et al., 1999, 2000; Profita and Bidder, 1988), the

most recent comprehensive review of AP research supports a theory of early

learning, which is the idea that everyone has the potential to develop AP, but

only during a certain period in childhood. Younger children are more likely todevelop AP because they are developmentally predisposed to attend to the

absolute rather than the relative features of melodies, as well as to the

absolute rather than the relative features of information in domains other

than music, such as numbers, space and metaphor (Takeuchi and Hulse,

1993). Can these two differing viewpoints about the etiology of AP be recon-

ciled? The hereditary explanation of AP does not specify the nature of an

inherited potential ability to develop AP, nor does it give a reason why AP is

only acquired in childhood. The environmental explanation of AP specifies

why there is a critical period in childhood, but does not give a reason for whyall children who begin musical training at young enough ages do not neces-

sarily develop AP. This article offers the novel, parsimonious explanation that

individuals who tend to pay particular attention to each musical pitch, due to

156 Psychology of Music 31(2)




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their developmental age and due to their cognitive style, are more likely to

develop AP. In other words, AP is a cognitive ability that develops in indivi-

duals who are genetically predisposed to a particular cognitive style and are

also exposed to a certain kind of music training during a critical period in

their childhood.

The role of cognitive development in the development of absolute

pitch

Research from developmental psychology supports the idea that younger

children are more likely to develop AP because they have not yet undergone

a critical transition in their cognitive development. This transition was

originally called the transition from preoperational thought to concrete

operations by Piaget (1950), who specified that it took place between the agesof 7 and 8 years; subsequent research has resulted in shifting this window

downward to between the ages of 5 and 7 years (Case et al., 1996; Sameroff

and Haith, 1996). This transition has also been described as the transition

from thinking unidimensionally to multidimensionally (Siegler, 1996). Piaget

tested whether children had made the transition from preoperational thought

to concrete operations by giving them conservation tasks. The classic example

of a Piagetian conservation task that most children can perform for the first

time between the ages of 5 and 7 years involves understanding that a tall,

narrow glass can hold the same amount of liquid as a short, wide glass.Younger children tend to focus on only one dimension of the glasses height

and mistakenly conclude that the taller glass holds more; older children are

able to simultaneously think about height and width.

Preoperational children make the transition to concrete operations in the

domain of music when they progress from understanding only first-order

relations, i.e. associating a name with each pitch, to understanding second-

order relations, i.e. associating a name with each interval, which requires

associating two pitches with each other. For example, discerning pitch direc-

tion involves understanding second-order relations, or comparisons betweennotes. In a study of young children, most of the 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds only

understood pitch in an absolute sense and did not understand pitch direction,

whereas most of the 5-year-olds understood pitch direction (White et al.,

1990). Similarly, in a study of young childrens singing, the 3- to 4-year-olds

were more likely to sing exactly the same pitches they had been taught,

whereas 5- to 6-year-olds were less likely to sing in the same key in which

they had been taught (Sergeant and Roche, 1973). By transposing, the older

children in this study were more likely to demonstrate their understanding of

such musical concepts as melodic contour, interval size and tonal sense.Hargreaves (1996) has referred to this period, when children become able to

represent more than one musical dimension at a time in their drawings of

music (Davidson and Scripp, cited in Hargreaves, 1996), as the schematic

Chin: Development of absolute pitch 157




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phase of the development of musical competence. Evidence that older chil-

dren have progressed through this phase, or achieved musical conservation,

is their successful performance on such tasks as maintaining key while

singing (Scott-Kassner, 1992) and recognizing transposed melodies (Bartlett

and Dowling, 1980). In non-music domains, older children are also able toreason in a much more sophisticated manner about such diverse concepts as

letters, numbers, narrative and space. When children experience the new-

found ability to integrate relational premise information (Halford, 1984)

between the ages of 5 and 7 years, they are undergoing a transition that has

also been referred to as progressing from formal representation to symbolic

representation (Bialystok, 1992), or merging two conceptual structures

(Case et al., 1996).

AP research supports the idea that a necessary factor in the development

of AP is music training in early childhood, before children have experiencedthe cognitive transition from thinking unidimensionally to thinking multidi-

mensionally. AP researchers from different disciplines, in three large surveys

and three smaller experimental studies, have found that individuals who

began music study at young ages are much more likely to have AP than indi-

viduals who started music study when older. A survey of over 2700 music

students (Gregersen et al., 1999) found that the mean age at which AP pos-

sessors began music activities was 5.4 years, whereas the mean age at which

non-AP students began music activities was 7.9 years. A survey of over 2000

musically educated college students and adults (Sergeant, 1969) found thatthe younger the mean age at which a group of musicians had started study-

ing music, the greater the proportion of musicians in that group with AP. In

groups of musicians who started studying music, on average, before 7 years

of age, over half possessed AP; for groups of musicians who started studying

music, on average, when older than 7 years of age, less than half possessed

AP. A survey of over 600 musicians (Baharloo et al., 1998) found that 31

percent of those who started studying music before the age of 7 had AP, but

only 5 percent of those who started studying music at the age of 7 years or

older had AP. With respect to the experimental studies, all 12 AP possessorsparticipating in a Canadian study, and most of the 6 imprecise AP possessors,

had started studying music at age 7 years or younger (Costa-Giomi et al.,

2001). All 12 AP possessors participating in a Japanese study, and nearly all

of the 10 imprecise AP possessors, had started piano lessons between the

ages of 3 and 5 years (Miyazaki, 1988). Similarly, all 11 AP possessors in

another Japanese study had started music lessons between the ages of 3 and

5 years, nearly all on the piano (Hirata et al., 1999).

Although research indicates that there may be a critical period for the

development of AP in typically developing children which ends between 5and 7 years of age, this critical period does not seem to exist for individuals with

Williams syndrome. Characteristics of Williams syndrome (which is known

to have a genetic basis) are strong language ability and high sociability, but





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severely impaired spatial and other cognitive abilities. Many individuals with

Williams syndrome demonstrate an interest in music (Lenhoff et al., 2001b),

and have been observed to possess a good sense of rhythm (Levitin and

Bellugi, 1998). People with Williams syndrome do not appear to have a criti-

cal period for the development of AP ending between 5 and 7 years of age,because they do not necessarily experience a cognitive shift at those ages.

Instead, individuals with Williams syndrome, a group whose average IQ is

about 55 (Wang, cited in Lenhoff et al., 2001a), may be similar mentally to

typically developing young children in having limited working memory.

Therefore, possessing AP, a long-term memory for pitches, can give both

typically developing young children and individuals with low IQs an advan-

tage in processing one aspect of music pitch. Although most people with

Williams syndrome who participate in musical activities learn by listening

and do not learn note names or how to read music, a study of five musicalindividuals with Williams syndrome who did know note names found that

they all had precise AP. Of relevance here is that the authors concluded the

window of opportunity for the development of AP open to normal individu-

als up to the age of 6 . . . is extended in individuals with Williams syndrome

(Lenhoff et al., 2001a: 500). Only one participant began music study at the

relatively young age of 5 years; the other four participants began music study

at ages 7, 8, 10 and 11 years. In fact, the participant who began music

lessons at age 11 years did not learn to name notes until 42 years old.

According to this study, individuals with Williams syndrome are a goodexample of how developmental age i.e. mental age, not chronological age

may be related to the development of AP.

The role of early music training in the development of absolute

pitch

Despite the strong correlational evidence for the necessity of music training

at an early age for the development of AP, the type of music training that is

required has not been identified. Typically, AP possessors were not taught AP,but seem to have acquired their ability in the natural course of taking their

music lessons, and cannot explain how they came to have AP. Despite several

reports of successfully teaching preschool-aged children AP (Takeuchi and

Hulse, 1993), this feat is not easily replicated (Cohen and Baird, 1990).

Evidently, it is important to take advantage of a critical period in childhood in

order to develop AP (Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993) because highly motivated

adults have only been able to train imprecise AP in themselves (Brady, 1970;

Meyer, 1899; Rush, 1989). Levitin (1994) proposes that AP may consist of

two abilities pitch memory and pitch labelling speculating that we all havepitch memory to some degree but only AP possessors develop pitch labeling.

A broader interpretation of this explanation, which emphasizes the impor-

tance of labeling pitches, would be that people with AP may encode pitch





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memories differently from other people, whether through use of a verbal label

or other cognitive strategy. AP possessors in Zatorre and Becketts (1989)

study reported using multiple strategies to encode pitches, i.e. fingering posi-

tions on their instruments and musical notation, as well as the letter names

of notes. Perhaps playing the piano or violin, or associating hand gestureswith singing do-re-mi, etc., in the Kodaly method (Brown, 1987), can help

young children encode pitches in multiple ways.

Playing the piano may most easily facilitate the development of AP in a

young child, who is able to map each pitch spatially onto its place in the key-

board. The piano probably plays an especially important role in the develop-

ment of AP, because some AP possessors can identify piano notes better than

pure tones (Baharloo et al., 1998; Lockhead and Byrd, 1981; Miyazaki,

1989); in fact, AP possessors have been found to identify white-key pitches

faster than black-key pitches (Miyazaki, 1989, 1990; Takeuchi and Hulse,1991). Unfortunately, AP studies often do not report participants instrumen-

tal background; however, a recent study of AP possessors and non-AP musi-

cians (Pantev et al., 1998) reported that the piano was a secondary instru-

ment for 8 out of the 11 non-pianists. If these woodwind and string players

were not atypical, and given that certain musical instruments (such as the

bassoon or double bass) are not accessible for young children to begin with as

their first instrument, it may be reasonable to assume that playing the piano

is critical for the early development of many instrumentalists. If young chil-

dren learning to play the piano are usually not encouraged to transpose, andtheir training often focuses on learning to sight-read music, then perhaps the

type of training commonly associated with playing the piano encourages

thinking in a framework conducive to the development of AP in certain indi-

viduals. For example, a study of over 1000 music students in the US found

that AP occurred at a greater rate in students of Asian descent (48%) than in

students of Caucasian descent (9%); as one possible factor, the authors note

the important fact that the Asian students were much more likely than

Caucasian students to have experienced early music training based on a fixed

do method, such as the Yamaha method or Royal College method (Gregersenet al., 2000).2

The role of cognitive style in the development of absolute pitch

A cognitive style is a general, non-conscious preference for processing infor-

mation in a particular way (Messick, 1994). Although the field of research

on cognitive style has a complex history, our discussion here is limited to indi-

vidual differences in field dependenceindependence and breadth of atten-

tion.3

It is the hypothesis of this article that individuals who are classified ashaving the field independent cognitive style, or tend to scan with narrow

attention, are more likely to develop AP.





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talent (Rimland and Fein, 1988). Moreover, in 13 case studies of cognitively

challenged subjects with incredible musical ability, many had autistic tenden-

cies, and all played the piano and possessed AP (Miller, 1989).

BREAD TH OF ATTEN TI ONIndividuals can be classified into cognitive styles, not only by field dependence

or field independence, but by their tendencies to deploy either broad atten-

tion, which refers to processing stimuli globally, or narrow attention, which

refers to breaking stimuli down into components (Zelniker and Jeffrey, 1979).

This article proposes that individuals who tend to perceive information,

including sounds, with narrow attention are more likely to develop AP.

According to one estimate, about 40 percent of young children have the ten-

dency to process information with narrow attention (Adams and Shepp, cited

in Zelniker and Jeffrey, 1979). If approximately 40 percent of the populationhas the potential to develop AP, that would explain why even the highest

reported rates of AP among musicians (whether Canadian, Japanese, or

Asian American) generally do not exceed 50 percent (Gregersen et al., 2000;

Kendall, 1996; Miyazaki, 1988; Sergeant, 1969).

Although not a main focus of research on AP, researchers have sometimes

studied AP in blind individuals and found that it occurs more frequently than

among sighted individuals. This research is discussed here because a possible

explanation is that blind individuals, extremely alert to their surroundings

with senses other than vision, may tend to employ a narrow attentional stylewith regard to auditory information. For instance, researchers have found

that blind people have the ability to localize sounds more precisely than sight-

ed people (Rauschecker, 2001). Bachem (1940) found AP to be more preva-

lent in blind than in sighted individuals, and later researchers corroborated

this finding. Welch (1988) found over half of the early blind children in his

sample gave indications of possessing AP, and mentions other reports of AP

occurring in blind individuals more frequently than in sighted individuals,

whether at a rate of 14 percent or around 50 percent (Revesz, 1953, and

Neal, 1983, cited in Welch, 1988). Recently, Hamilton et al. (2000) reportedthat 58 percent of the early blind musicians in their study had AP. If it is

adaptive for blind children to develop the cognitive style of narrow attention

when paying particular attention to sounds in their environment, perhaps

this enhanced sensitivity to individual environmental sounds naturally leads

blind people to attend narrowly to individual musical pitches. Supporting this

idea is the finding that blind participants performance on a test requiring

auditory attention, the auditory EFT, was superior to that of sighted partici-

pants (Witkin et al., 1971). Doing well on this test requires recognizing

whether a short tune, consisting of three, four or five notes, is contained in alonger tune.





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Neurological correlates in the development of absolute pitch

Two aspects of the brain may be related to the facilitation of the development

of AP: brain plasticity and hemispheric lateralization. Although the type of

music training in early childhood has been discussed as important to the

development of AP, another factor that may contribute to young children

being able to develop AP is their greater brain plasticity. A growing area of

research concerns the improvement of childrens spatial and other abilities

due to music study, whether keyboard-based (Costa-Giomi, 1999; Rauscher

et al., 1997), songbell- and singing-based (Gromko and Poorman, 1998), or

singing-based through the Kodaly curriculum (Gardiner et al., 1996; Hurwitz

et al., 1975). In addition, research on the brains of adults has found differ-

ences between musicians and non-musicians (Elbert et al., 1995; Pantev et al.,

1998; Schlaug et al., 1995). The results of these studies suggest that the

adult musicians early participation in musical activities when they were

children helped to shape the development of their brains.

Hemispheric lateralization refers to the phenomenon that many brain

functions are specialized to some extent in the left hemisphere or the right

hemisphere of the brain. For example, most right-handed individuals are

dominant for language in their left hemisphere (Loring et al., cited in

Springer and Deutsch, 1997). Individuals with AP may also be dominant for

musical pitch perception in their left hemisphere. A possible correlate of cog-

nitive style in brain anatomy is the degree of asymmetry of the planum tem-

porale (PT), a region of the auditory cortex found in both temporal lobes. The

PT has been observed to be relatively larger on the left side in most people

(Geschwind and Levitsky, 1968). It has also been found to be relatively larger

on the left side in AP possessors to a greater extent than in non-AP musicians

and non-musicians (Schlaug et al., 1995). According to a recent study, this

greater leftward asymmetry in the planum temporale of AP possessors is due

to a smaller PT region in the right hemisphere (Keenan et al., 2001). 4 The

authors propose that:

. . . early developmental pruning in the right PT may create an anatomicaldominance of the left PT. This in turn might create a functional dominance of

the left PT over the right PT, which might be necessary for the acquisition

and/or manifestation of AP. (p. 1407)

Although the type of early music training may account for early develop-

mental pruning in the right PT, another possible explanation is that individ-

uals may differ in their genetic coding for aspects of brain development or in

the prenatal environment experienced, either of which could affect asym-

metry of the PT. If so, it is likely that multiple genes would influence the

development of the PT, and leftward asymmetry of the PT could be consid-ered analogous to an emergenic trait (Lykken et al., 1992), rather than there

being the existence of a single AP gene (Lenhoff et al., 2001b). To speculate:

being left-brained in ones PT could possibly reflect a more general dominance





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of the left hemisphere in multiple brain functions, and the more analytical

cognitive style (field independent or narrow attention) hypothesized to be

associated with the development of AP. Many researchers in the area of

hemispheric specialization believe that the left hemisphere is dominant for

sequential and analytical processing of information, whereas the right hemi-sphere is dominant for global, holistic processing (Bever, 1980; Goldberg and

Costa, 1981).

The development of AP may be mainly limited to the window of develop-

ment prior to about the age of 6 years because the left hemisphere is develop-

ing faster than the right hemisphere between ages 3 to 6 years (Thatcher et

al., 1987). In most typically developing children, the left hemisphere becomes

dominant for language during this period. It is the position of this article that,

among children who are exposed to participation in certain types of musical

activities during this period, those who have the field independent cognitivestyle, or tend to perceive information with narrow attention, will be predis-

posed to thinking of music in terms of AP.

Conclusion and future directions in AP research

Currently, researchers studying AP acknowledge the importance of music

training in early childhood for the development of AP. Researchers who

believe in a cognitive explanation know that the level of cognitive develop-

ment of preschoolers plays an important role (Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993).Researchers who believe in a genetic explanation are searching for a single

AP gene (Baharloo et al., 2000; Gregersen et al., 2000; Profita and Bidder,

1988). Researchers who believe there is a neurological correlate of AP have

found greater leftward asymmetry of the planum temporale (PT) in individu-

als with AP (Keenan et al., 2001; Schlaug et al., 1995). How do these pieces

of the puzzle of AP fit together?

Since cognitive style can be genetically influenced, the idea presented in

this article regarding the roles of cognitive style and early music training in

the development of AP is the first to integrate a cognitive and a genetic expla-nation. There are two factors that can facilitate the development of AP: (1)

experiencing a certain kind of music training before the age of 6 years, and

(2) being predisposed to interpreting the world with an analytic cognitive

style. It is important for children to be exposed to musical activities before the

age of 6 years, because the preoperational period of Piaget (1950) ages

3 to 6 years is when children have not yet begun to think of music in a

more relativistic manner, and is also a period in which the left hemisphere

experiences a growth spurt (Thatcher et al., 1987). Those children who are

predisposed to interpreting the world with an analytic cognitive style, i.e.would be classified as field independent or have the tendency to use narrow

attention, are more likely to develop AP if they have particular kinds of music

experience during the critical period of the preschool years. The biological





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basis of the individual differences between children in cognitive style may be

coded for by multiple genes affecting brain development, or even influenced

by hormones during their development in the womb. And it may be that, in

some cases, such as those of blind individuals, environmental factors can

affect cognitive style.This articles hypothesis about the importance of early music training and

cognitive style in the development of AP suggests interesting research direc-

tions. The easiest study would examine whether adult AP possessors exhibit

the cognitive styles hypothesized to facilitate the development of AP field

independence and the tendency to use narrow attention processes. The most

elegant kind of research would be a prospective, longitudinal study of chil-

dren from preschool through puberty. Childrens cognitive styles would be

assessed before and throughout music training to discover whether children

who are field independent and have the tendency to use narrow attentionprocesses are more likely to develop AP. Children would be given piano, violin,

guitar or voice lessons in order to determine whether playing certain instru-

ments facilitates the development of AP. Childrens naturalistic music behav-

iors could also be observed (Miller, 1987).

The challenge for researchers in the cognitive neuroscience tradition is to

discover whether the greater leftward asymmetry in the PT of AP possessors

(Keenan et al., 2001; Schlaug et al., 1995) is simply one indicator of an

analytic cognitive style, or to further specify what role the PT plays in pitch

perception for individuals with AP. Although a clear picture of how music isprocessed in the brain has yet to emerge (Brust, 2001), researchers by using

multiple techniques have found differences between AP possessors and

non-AP musicians and non-musicians (Barnea et al., 1994; Gordon, 1998;

Hantz et al., 1992; Hirata et al., 1999; Katanoda et al., 2000; Klein et al.,

1984; Wayman et al., 1992; Zatorre et al., 1998).

One research suggestion for geneticists who believe in the existence of a

single AP gene is to stop assuming that there is no way to test for AP in peo-

ple with no music training, and instead further adapt Levitins (1999) clever

procedure of investigating whether non-musicians could remember pitchesby having them carry around and listen to a tuning fork for a week, then test-

ing them a week later for recognition of the pitch. Presumably, non-musician

adults predicted to carry the AP gene would display more accurate pitch

memory than non-musician adults predicted to lack the AP gene. It may also

be worthwhile to explore the assessment of pitch memory in individuals

without music training by administering such measures as the Distorted

Tunes Test (DTT), which requires recognition of melodies (Drayna et al.,

2001).

Also, more research on music perception in the first two years of life iswarranted. Despite the emphasis of this articles hypothesis on the impor-

tance of the preschool years, it is possible that music experience early in life

plays an important role, but the music development of infants and toddlers





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has been studied to a lesser extent than that of older children (however, see

Kelley and Sutton-Smith, 1987; Saffran and Griepentrog, 2001; Trehub,

2001). In fact, music experience in the womb may even affect development

(Lecanuet, 1996; Schlaug et al., 1995).

In addition to these future research directions, it would be fascinating todiscover whether AP is a universal phenomenon. Ethnomusicologists could

begin to investigate AP. Although the research discussed in this article took

place in different countries, all studies were of musicians trained in Western

music. Does AP exist in non-Western music cultures? For example, Javanese

gamelan (Indonesian) music is based on a pentatonic scale and the musical

instruments in each villages set, or gamelan, are tuned to each other and not

to an absolute standard (Van Zanten, 1997). If AP exists among Javanese

musicians, what kind of music experience is associated with the development

of AP? Is it necessary to grow up hearing the gamelan of only one village? IfAP does not exist among Javanese musicians, why not?

Researchers in diverse disciplines have made important contributions

to our current understanding of the phenomenon of AP. While the techno-

logical advances in studying the brain are clearly the most exciting recent

developments to affect the study of AP, the greatest future progress in

figuring out how AP develops may come from taking interdisciplinary

approaches.

N O T E S

1. Andrzej Rakowski, Professor of Sound Engineering, Fryderyk Chopin Academy of

Music, Warsaw.

2. Another factor of possible relevance here is that speakers of tone languages, such

as Mandarin, may use a type of AP (Deutsch et al., 1999).

3. For something to be a cognitive style rather than a cognitive ability, there must be

advantages for those who score at either end of the spectrum. Although

researchers seem to agree that breadth of attention is truly a cognitive style, note

that the construct of field independence has been criticized for simply being spa-

tial ability or intelligence in disguise (see Ferrari and Sternberg, 1998), and hence

a cognitive ability rather than a cognitive style (Kemler Nelson and Smith, 1989).4. Some researchers believe that it is the greater rightward asymmetry of the

planum parietale, rather than the greater leftward asymmetry of the planum

temporale, that distinguishes AP possessors from others (Katanoda et al., 2000).

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a meeting of the European Society

for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) in 1997. While writing this paper, the

author was supported by grants from the University of California at Santa Cruz and

the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The author would like to acknowledge thehelp of Avril Thorne and the reviewers of the manuscript.





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Absolute Pitch: An Approach for Identification of Genetic and Nongenetic

Components, American Journal of Human Genetics 62(2): 22431.

Baharloo, S., Service, S.K., Risch, N., Gitschier, J. and Freimer, N.B. (2000) Familial

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C HR IS TI NA S . C H I N is currently a psychology instructor at the College of Alameda

and a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Her dissertation is about artistically talented adolescents and the social support they

receive from family members, friends and teachers for their artistic activities (includ-

ing music). She holds an MS in psychology from the University of California at Santa

Cruz, an EdM from Harvard University, and a BA from the University of California at

Berkeley.

Address: College of Alameda, Division of Arts and Letters, 555 Atlantic Avenue,

Alameda, CA 94501, USA. [email: [email protected]]


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