Absolute pitch and tone language - Two new studies

2009

Two new studies provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis that absolute pitch is strongly influenced by a speech-related critical period. The first study examined the prevalence of absolute pitch among students in at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, as a function of age of onset of musical training, ethnicity, fluency in speaking a tone language, and country of early music education. Among those of East Asian ethnicity, performance on a test of absolute pitch was strongly correlated with fluency in speaking a tone language. The advantage of early onset of musical training did not interact statistically with the effects of tone language fluency, and further…