Interval and Pitch Recognition in and out of Immediate Context

Abstract

Samples of 24 and 12 college music majors were given tests of interval recognition and pitch recognition to investigate specific context effects. Absolute-pitch individuals were excluded. Conditions were: (1) single tones (pitch recognition), (2) isolated as cending intervals terminating in the same tones, (3) the same intervals, preceded by a distractor tone, and (4) the same intervals followed by a distractor tone. Conditions 3a and 4a were also run, with the distance of the distractor tone from its adjacent tone changed from a major third to a minor third. Recognition of the minor third, tritone, and minor and major sixths was enhanced by condition 4, as compared with the control condition 2. In condition 3 incorrect responses overestimated the targets, whereas in condition 4 targets were underestimated. There was no evidence that pitch recognition ability in nonabsolute pitch subjects aids interval recognition.