Abstract
Most individuals, regardless of formal musical training, have long-term absolute pitch memory (APM) for familiar musical recordings, though with varying levels of accuracy. The present study followed up on recent evidence suggesting an association between singing accuracy and APM (Halpern & Pfordresher, 2022, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 84(1), 260–269), as well as tonal short-term memory (STM) and APM (Van Hedger et al., 2018, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(4), 879–891). Participants from three research sites (n = 108) completed a battery of tasks including APM, tonal STM, singing accuracy, and self-reported auditory imagery. Both tonal STM and singing accuracy predicted APM, replicating prior results. Tonal STM also predicted singing accuracy, music training, and auditory imagery. Further tests suggested that the association between APM and singing accuracy was fully mediated by tonal STM. This pattern comports well with models of vocal pitch matching that include STM for pitch as a mechanism for sensorimotor translation.
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Data Availability
All data and analysis scripts are available through Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QP5RW).
Notes
The TSTM task in Van Hedger et al. (2018) was called the implicit note memory (INM) task. However, it was treated as a measure of tonal short-term memory precision.
The oldest participant (57 years old) was an outlier in terms of age and was substantially older than the next oldest participant (34 years old). However, we opted to include the oldest participant as they were not outliers—defined by the Interquartile Range (IQR) Method of 1.5*IQR—on any of the measures.
The final three items of the Clarity Subscale of the BAIS were unintentionally not administered to participants.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Abdullah Alam, Lihui De, Mitchell Dugan, Emma Gandolfi, Elizabeth Goldstein, Michaela Lester, and Richard Nicosia for help with data collection.
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Appendix
Appendix
Title | Artist |
|---|---|
Single Ladies | Beyoncé |
Umbrella | Rihanna |
Shake It off | Taylor Swift |
Toxic | Britney Spears |
Rolling in the Deep | Adele |
Firework | Katy Perry |
Blinding Lights | The Weeknd |
Hey Ya! | Outkast |
Hips Don’t Lie | Shakira |
Bringing Sexy Back | Justin Timberlake |
Call Me Maybe | Carly Rae Jepsen |
Uptown Funk | Bruno Mars |
Poker Face | Lady Gaga |
Starships | Nicki Minaj |
Royals | Lorde |
Party in the U.S.A. | Miley Cyrus |
bad guy | Billie Eilish |
Get Lucky | Daft Punk |
Happy | Pharrell Williams |
Despacito | Luis Fonsi |
Gangnam Style | PSY |
Take On Me | a-ha |
Sweet Child O’ Mine | Guns N’ Roses |
Imagine | John Lennon |
We Are the Champions | Queen |
Smells Like Teen Spirit | Nirvana |
Somebody That I Used to Know | Gotye |
American Pie | Don McLean |
28 excerpts of popular songs that were used in the APM task.
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Van Hedger, S.C., Halpern, A.R., Vollweiler, D.J. et al. Is Hey Jude in the right key? Cognitive components of absolute pitch memory. Mem Cogn (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01530-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01530-x