Neonates detect transposed pattern violations while adult interval discrimination stays surprisingly poor

Evidence

In support of the assumed generality of relative pitch perception, it has been shown that violations of transposed pitch patterns elicit discriminative brain responses in neonates (Stefanics et al. 2009 ) and young infants (Tew et al. 2009 ). So it is surprising that relative pitch perception can be rather poor (e.g. see (Foster and Zatorre 2010 ; McDermott et al. 2010 )), especially if contour violations and tonal melodies are excluded (Dowling 1986 ). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5263

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to work on infant auditory predictive coding and to McDermott and Oxenham 2008 which this chapter later cites.

Related

• Neural detection of transposed melodies coexists with surprisingly poor explicit interval recognition (similarity 0.92)
• Relative pitch perception is more limited than commonly assumed (similarity 0.90)
• Even trained musicians have great difficulty detecting deviant melodic patterns under transposition (similarity 0.83)
• Exact repetition allows direct pitch comparison whereas transposition forces interval processing (similarity 0.82)
• Large melodic intervals and multiple transpositions each independently impair deviant detection. (similarity 0.81)
• Relative pitch perception resists explanation by invariant interval ratios (similarity 0.81)
• Listeners cannot use a repeated pattern as a template for transposed comparisons (similarity 0.80)
• Western music’s privileged intervals show no perceptual detection advantage (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Recognizing interval patterns fails when tested on transposed melodic deviants #corroborates (0.92) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5260
• Rapid pattern sensitivity does not transfer to transposed versions of the same pattern #corroborates (0.85)
• Auditory detection and discrimination are distinct abilities that can diverge #expands (0.82) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2357
• Temporal-structure sensitivity declines with age even when audiograms remain normal. #qualifies (0.80) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1026
• Perceptual deficits correlate poorly with audiogram thresholds and vary widely #qualifies (0.75) — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1716