Journal
COGNITION
Volume 98, Issue 1, Pages 1-11Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.09.008
Keywords
pitch; development; auditory perception; infants
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in Music and prosody in speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch, and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily relative pitch processors. Infants familiarized with a melody for 7 days preferred, on the eighth day, to listen to a novel melody in comparison to the familiarized one, regardless of whether the melodies at test were presented at the same pitch as during familiarization or transposed up or down by a perfect fifth (7/12th of an octave) or a tritone (1/2 octave). On the other hand, infants showed no preference for a transposed over original-pitch version of the familiarized melody, indicating that either they did not remember the absolute pitch, or it was not as salient to them as the relative pitch. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available