A. Recognition of notated melodies by possessors and non-possessors of absolute-pitch.

Miyazaki, K. & Rakowski, A.
Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 1337-1345 (2002)

The performance in a melody recognition task was compared between listeners having absolute pitch and those not having absolute pitch. In each trial, participants were shown a short standard melody notated in the C major and heard a comparison melody played in the C major (untransposed) or in the A flat major or F sharp major (transposed). The comparison melody was either exactly the same as the notated standard in relative pitch or had one tone shifted by one or two semitones. Listeners were required to judge whether the comparison melody was the same or not as the notated standard ignoring the differences in absolute pitch. The listeners having no absolute pitch exhibited equivalent performance regardless of whether or not the comparison melodies were transposed from the notated standard melodies. By contrast, although the absolute-pitch listeners exhibited better performance for untransposed melodies, they showed poorer performance for transposed melodies. This performance decline in recognizing transposed melodies by absolute-pitch listeners, suggests a disadvantageous aspect of the property of long-term auditory memory called ﾒabsolute pitchﾓ in processing musical pitch.