Trial reportPloS one2010
Absolute pitch: effects of timbre on note-naming ability.
Trial report in PloS one, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Conceptual coherence but methodological mayhem: A systematic review of absolute pitch phenotyping.Behavior research methods · 2025Pooled it
- Categorization of and Adaptation to Human Voice and Musical Instruments: A Passive Listening EEG Study.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Contrastive adaptation effects along a voice-nonvoice continuum.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- Article
- Absolute pitch judgments of familiar melodies generalize across timbre and octave.Memory & cognition · 2023Article
- Generalizing across tonal context, timbre, and octave in rapid absolute pitch training.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2023Article
- Auditory temporal resolution and backward masking in musicians with absolute pitch.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Voice disadvantage effects in absolute and relative pitch judgments.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2022Article
- Understanding Sensitive Period Effects in Musical Training.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Use of explicit priming to phenotype absolute pitch ability.PloS one · 2022Article
- Individual differences in human frequency-following response predict pitch labeling ability.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Article
- Article
- A Theory of Instrument-Specific Absolute Pitch.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Absolute pitch memory: its prevalence among musicians and dependence on the testing context.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2014Article
- Absolute and relative pitch: Global versus local processing of chords.Advances in cognitive psychology · 2014Article
- Article
- Enhancement of speech-relevant auditory acuity in absolute pitch possessors.Frontiers in psychology · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAbsolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce isolated musical tones. It is evident primarily among individuals who started music lessons in early childhood. Because AP requires memory for specific pitches as well as learned associations with verbal labels (i.e., note names), it represents a unique opportunity to study interactions in memory between linguistic and nonlinguistic information. One untested hypothesis is that the pitch of voices may be difficult for AP possessors to identify. A musician's first instrument may also affect performance and extend the sensitive period for acquiring accurate AP. METHODS/PRINCIPAL
findingsA large sample of AP possessors was recruited on-line. Participants were required to identity test tones presented in four different timbres: piano, pure tone, natural (sung) voice, and synthesized voice. Note-naming accuracy was better for non-vocal (piano and pure tones) than for vocal (natural and synthesized voices) test tones. This difference could not be attributed solely to vibrato (pitch variation), which was more pronounced in the natural voice than in the synthesized voice. Although starting music lessons by age 7 was associated with enhanced note-naming accuracy, equivalent abilities were evident among listeners who started music lessons on piano at a later age. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Because the human voice is inextricably linked to language and meaning, it may be processed automatically by voice-specific mechanisms that interfere with note naming among AP possessors. Lessons on piano or other fixed-pitch instruments appear to enhance AP abilities and to extend the sensitive period for exposure to music in order to develop accurate AP.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.