抄録
According to the view that the attribute of tones has two components : "pitch" (tone height) and "chroma" (tone chroma), absolute pitch (AP) is to be defined as the ability of "chroma" identification. The purpose of this study was to examine how well AP possessors of the ability to identify "chroma", and non-possessors of no such ability could identify "pitch". Subjects were 20 non-possessors, 10 AP possessors who were able to identify all tones' chroma (AP possessors [all]) and 10 AP possessors who were able to identify only white key tones' chroma (AP possessors [white]). According to our study, a pitch identification task showed differences among groups. AP possessors [all] showed to be superior to non-possessors. By contrast, AP possessors [white] proved to be the same as non-possessors. The results suggested that AP possessors [all] identified pitch absolutely, and non-possessors did it according to its relative heights of tones. AP possessors [white] showed confused error patterns.
