Pitch-interval discrimination and musical expertise: is the semitone a perceptual boundary?
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Cross-sectional comparative study (graded by non-clinical design analogy)
PubMed 22894219 · doi:10.1121/1.4733535
What was done
Musicians and non-musicians completed fixed-pitch and roving-pitch auditory discrimination tasks across varied pitch distances to evaluate the impact of musical training on pitch-interval perception.
What was found
Both groups improved in fixed-pitch interval discrimination as interval differences increased. In the roving-pitch task, only musicians improved as interval differences increased. Musicians outperformed non-musicians across most interval differences in both tasks. Musicians demonstrated improved discrimination starting at interval differences of 100 cents (one semitone), whereas non-musicians showed enhancement only at differences exceeding 125 cents. The abstract reports no sample size, confidence intervals, or specific error rates.
Why it matters
This study suggests that musical training refines auditory interval discrimination down to a 100-cent threshold, which may represent a training-induced perceptual limit corresponding to the Western semitone.
Limits
The abstract does not report sample size, participant characteristics, or precise performance metrics beyond the 100- and 125-cent thresholds. The cross-sectional comparative design cannot rule out pre-existing auditory differences rather than training-induced effects.
Cited by
- contradicts A trained violinist shifting their finger on a string by one micron produces a change in pitch that the human ear can perceive.