Why are people able to acquire absolute pitch only during early childhood ?: Training age and acquisition of absolute pitch

Abstract

Determinations of pitch can be based on either of 2 attributes of a tone: its chroma, a quality shared by all notes described by a particular letter (e.g., C, D, E), and its height, the position of one note relative to others. Absolute pitch is the ability to identify a note based on its chroma. There is a critical period for the acquistion of absolute pitch. Although this skill can be achieved through appropriate training, it has been observed that children over the age of 6 find it difficult to acquire absolute pitch, and this difficulty increases with age. Our research institute has been investigating the relationship of age to the development of absolute pitch in children. The present experiment reports results from training 8 children (four 2-year-olds and four 5-year-olds). The younger children identified notes based on their chroma, whereas the older children focused mainly on the notes' height. This tendency to shift from an emphasis on chroma to one on height increased with increasing age, thereby making the acquisition of absolute pitch more difficult.