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made comparison between the male and female subjects within each subgroup, and no effects of gender were found; and there was no overall trend based on gender in either direction.
What happens when we relax the criterion for absolute pitch? Figure 4 displays the percentages of subjects who obtained a score of at least 85% on the same test, but now allowing for semitone errors. Again, it can be seen that both the Central Conservatory and the Eastman students showed orderly effects of age of onset of musical training. And it can also be seen that the difference between the Central Conservatory and the Eastman students was even more extreme. For students who had started taking music lessons at ages 4 and 5, approximately 74% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion, whereas only about 14% of the U.S. non- tone language speakers did so. And of those who had begun music lessons at ages 6 and 7, roughly 68% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion, whereas this was true of only about 10% of the U.S. nontone language speakers. And of those who had begun music lessons at ages 8 and 9, again roughly 42% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion whereas none of the U.S. nontone language speakers did so. Again, there were no differences depending on gender in either group or any subgroup.
These findings support the conjecture that, when given the opportunity, infants can acquire absolute pitch for the tones of their language, so that they can later acquire absolute pitch for musical tones in the same way as they would the tones of a second tone language. In fact, the findings obtained here for the acquisition of absolute pitch in tone language and nontone language speakers reflect a very simi- lar picture, in terms of timeframe, to the critical periods inferred by linguists for the acquisition of first and second languages respectively. This supports the hypothesis that, for speakers of tone languages, the acquisition of absolute pitch during musical training is analogous to learning the tones of
Fig. 3. Percentages of subjects who obtained a score of at least 85% correct on the test of absolute pitch. The data are plotted as a function of age of onset of musical training. Red boxes show the results from students at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM), Beijing, China; all these subjects were speakers of the tone lan- guage Mandarin. Blue boxes show the results from students at Eastman School of Music (ESM), Rochester, New York; all these subjects were nontone language speakers. (From Deutsch et al., Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2006).
this test for absolute pitch. As can be seen, both the Central Conservatory students (that is, the Mandarin speakers) and the Eastman students (that is, the U.S. nontone language speakers) showed orderly effects of age of onset of musical training—the earlier the age of onset, the higher the proba- bility of meeting the criterion for absolute pitch.
It can also be seen that, for all levels of age of onset of musical training, the percentage of those who met the crite- rion was far higher for the Central Conservatory group than for the Eastman group. For students who had started taking music lessons at ages 4 and 5, approximately 60% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion, while only 14% of the U.S. nontone language speakers did so. For students who had begun music lessons at ages 6 and 7, approximately 55% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion, whereas this was true of only 6% of the U.S. nontone language speakers. For those who had begun music lessons at ages 8 and 9, roughly 42% of the Mandarin speakers met the criterion, whereas none of the U.S. nontone language speakers did so. We also
Fig. 4. Percentages of subjects who obtained a score of at least 85% correct on the test of absolute pitch, allowing for semitone errors. The data are plotted as a func- tion of age of onset of musical training. Red boxes show the results from students at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM), Beijing, China; all these subjects were speakers of the tone language Mandarin. Blue boxes show the results from students at Eastman School of Music (ESM), Rochester, New York; all these subjects were nontone language speakers. (From Deutsch et al., Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2006).
16 Acoustics Today, October 2006