Memory for melody: Infants use a relative pitch code.

Memory for melody: Infants use a relative pitch code. Plantinga, J. & Trainor, L. J Cognition, 98(1):1-11, 2005.
doi abstract bibtex

Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in music and prosody in speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch, and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily relative pitch processors. Infants familiarized with a melody for 7 days preferred, on the eighth day, to listen to a novel melody in comparison to the familiarized one, regardless of whether the melodies at test were presented at the same pitch as during familiarization or transposed up or down by a perfect fifth (7/12th of an octave) or a tritone (1/2 octave). On the other hand, infants showed no preference for a transposed over original-pitch version of the familiarized melody, indicating that either they did not remember the absolute pitch, or it was not as salient to them as the relative pitch.

@Article{Plantinga2005,
  author   = {Judy Plantinga and Laurel J Trainor},
  journal  = {Cognition},
  title    = {Memory for melody: {I}nfants use a relative pitch code.},
  year     = {2005},
  number   = {1},
  pages    = {1-11},
  volume   = {98},
  abstract = {Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in music and prosody in
	speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store
	melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch,
	and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low
	pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily
	relative pitch processors. Infants familiarized with a melody for
	7 days preferred, on the eighth day, to listen to a novel melody
	in comparison to the familiarized one, regardless of whether the
	melodies at test were presented at the same pitch as during familiarization
	or transposed up or down by a perfect fifth (7/12th of an octave)
	or a tritone (1/2 octave). On the other hand, infants showed no preference
	for a transposed over original-pitch version of the familiarized
	melody, indicating that either they did not remember the absolute
	pitch, or it was not as salient to them as the relative pitch.},
  doi      = {10.1016/j.cognition.2004.09.008},
  keywords = {16297673},
}

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