Absolute Pitch – Cognitive Anomaly, Exceptional Music Ability or Adaptation? Cover Image

Słuch absolutny – poznawcza anomalia, wyjątkowa zdolność muzyczna czy adaptacja?
Absolute Pitch – Cognitive Anomaly, Exceptional Music Ability or Adaptation?

Author(s): Piotr Podlipniak
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Cognitive Science

Summary/Abstract: Perfect pitch is one of the most mysterious human capacities. Unfortunately, the mechanisms that allow its development are still not satisfactorily understood. For years, the perfect pitch has been considered a unique musical ability and the main causes of its inception were sought in musical activity. It has been explained by either inheritance or early learning process. Currently, when the „nature-education” problem has lost its sharpness, the interest of researchers is focusing on the problem of rare occurrence of the perfect pitch, and the observed disproportion between the incidence of this capacity in the Western and Asian populations. These phenomena can be explained by the hereby proposed hypothesis of the perfect pitch as an adaptation that is related not to musicality, but to existence of a particular form of proto-language.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 153-158
  • Page Count: 6
  • Language: Polish