The absolute pitch and the event related potentials:
The study of amplitudes, latencies, and distributions of P300 components.
ABSTRACT
The notion of reduced or absent P300 components for absolute pitch possessors
has gained both supporting and challenging evidence in previous studies. Possible
reasons for these inconsistent results include issues of screening process,
task difficulty, and between-subjects variations in brain potentials. In this
study, we investigated similarities and differences in P300 components between
absolute and non-absolute pitch possessors while controlling the aforementioned
three factors. Results confirmed that absolute pitch possessors elicit P300
components with smaller amplitudes relative to non-absolute pitch possessors
in some tasks involving pitch discrimination. There were no differences in the
distributions and latencies of P300 between two groups in all experimental conditions.
Key words: absolute pitch, event related potentials, P300 components, oddball paradigm