| This study was formulated to delineate some of the processing aspects of absolute pitch using psychophysiological measures of the brain's electrical activity called event-related potentials. The study used two groups: musically trained adult subjects, age 18 and over, 10 with absolute pitch (determined by performance on a pitch naming task) and 10 musically trained subjects without. Subjects were asked to perform four tasks while brain electrical activity was measured, time-locked to the onset and offset of the stimulus. Performance measures and various components of the event-related potential were analyzed for differences associated with subject group, task, type of response, and electrode site.; Tasks included: (1) a pitch naming condition which utilized stimuli throughout the complete range of the piano; (2) a pitch memory task, where subjects were required to match a standard pitch after the presentation of several interference tones; (3) a modified version of the pitch memory task, where pitches were mistuned to positions on either side of traditional tuned note boundaries; and (4) a visual analog of the pitch memory task. Reaction times were recorded for the pitch naming task and all memory conditions, both visual and auditory.; Behavioral measures exhibited good discriminability between groups, with the absolute pitch group demonstrating significantly higher percent correct scores on the pitch naming task, and significantly higher d{dollar}spprime{dollar} scores on the auditory memory tasks. Event-related potential results also indicated that absolute pitch subjects exhibited increased P300 amplitude to the mistuned condition, and differential scalp topography effects for N100 amplitude in the tuned condition. A model of pitch processing for absolute pitch was proposed, in which peripheral gating, attentional mechanisms, and memory mechanisms were implicated. |
