Tune recognition emerges from learning the same melody across many pitch levels

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 ). … McDermott et al. ( 2010 ), commenting on the poor pitch interval discrimination threshold they found, suggested that the importance of pitch as an expressive musical feature may rest more on an ability to detect pitch differences between tones, rather than an ability to recognise complex patterns of pitch intervals. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5263 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Learning a tune may require hearing it at many pitch levels across linked contexts — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5263; Learning a tune across many pitch levels enables invariant recognition, like visual object learning; Melody recognition survives transposition because pitch intervals, not absolute pitches, are encoded (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Recognizing interval patterns fails when tested on transposed melodic deviants #complicates (0.80)
• Neural detection of transposed melodies coexists with surprisingly poor explicit interval recognition #complicates (0.78) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5263