# Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood

## TL;DR

Adults can learn to identify musical pitches accurately through an 8-week training program, challenging the belief that this ability is only possible in childhood.

## Contribution

Demonstrates that absolute pitch can be learned in adulthood using a structured training program, beyond the critical period.

## Key findings

- Participants could name an average of 7.08 pitches with 90% accuracy after training.
- Pitch-naming accuracy improved by 128.1% and error size decreased by 42.7%.
- Improvements partially generalized to an untrained timbre.

## Abstract

Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the pitch of a tone without external references. It is commonly believed that only individuals with special genetic makeup and early musical training within the critical period can develop AP. Recent studies have begun to challenge the critical period notion by showing the possibility of AP acquisition in adults. However, the learning effects could be attributed to learning of pitch height instead of chroma, extended working memory, relative pitch strategies, chance under repeated attempts, pre-existing AP abilities and/or specific cognitive profiles. An 8-week online computerized training program was designed to address these concerns and clarify learnability of AP in adulthood. Twelve musicians on average spent 21.4 h completing 15,327 training trials. By the end of the training, they learned to name an average of 7.08 pitches (ranging from 3 to 12) at an accuracy of 90% or above and within a response-time (RT) window of 1,305–2,028 ms. After training, pitch-naming accuracy was significantly improved by 128.1% (from .139 to .317) and size of error reduced by 42.7% (from 2.62 to 1.50 semitones) for the trained timbre, which generalized partially to an untrained timbre. Overall, results provide more convincing evidence for the learnability of AP judgment in adulthood beyond the critical period, similar to most perceptual and cognitive abilities.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-024-02620-2.