4 ms·

> Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be acquired early

> Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be acquired early in life. From an evolutionary perspective, what could possibly be the reason for this?

brutusborn 6y ago
Diversion of neural resources to tasks encountered more frequently perhaps? I.e. children that develop in a culture where pitch isn't important end up pruning the neurons for absolute pitch after a critical period.
klodolph 6y ago
Infants can distinguish nearly any sound in any language, but not all sounds are important. They lose the ability to distinguish sounds that they don't need to distinguish. The experiment to figure this out is pretty interesting. A native English speaker has no problem distinguishing /θ/ as in "this" from /s/ as in "sis", but not very many languages need you to make this distinction, so people who learn English later in life have a very hard time with it. Likewise, English speakers can't tell the difference between long and short vowels, or long and short consonants. That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. But you'd have a hard time learning Finnish or Japanese without it. And then there are the weird cases, like how in English we have rules for aspirating and voicing /t/ and /k/. If you speak Mandarin then you might pick out /t/ as if it were /d/, but only in certain positions. So "stop" might sound like "sdop", but "top" sounds like "top".
- robocat 6y ago
  > That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. English has the distinction for vowels and it does matter. “can’t” and “cunt” have the same vowel sound in some accents, but “can’t” needs a long vowel sound while “cunt” needs a short vowel sound. Native English speakers speak those those two words quite distinctly. Lose/loose is another pair (confusingly “lose“ has a long vowel sound and “loose” has a short vowel sound.) Moon needs a long vowel sound to sound right. I am sure you can think of other examples.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    You're right, that in some dialects it is different. But to most English dialects, "can't" and "cunt" have completely different vowels, and the length isn't distinguished. "Lose" and "loose" are also distinguished by the voicing, "lose" ends with /z/ and "loose" ends with /s/. Maybe not all dialects.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
darksaints 6y ago
Why do you assume there is an evolutionary basis for this? Evolutionary perspectives might be helpful for understanding broad genetic characteristics of entire populations. But it isn't even clear if absolute pitch is heritable, let alone anything more than a random variation with null survivability benefits.
- klodolph 6y ago
  Absolute pitch is heritable in the sense that nearly everyone is born with it. The theories I've heard are that we are born with absolute pitch and develop relative pitch later on, losing absolute pitch at around eight months old. We also develop the ability to associate octaves, so C and C' start sounding "alike" at some point, but this happens because we are exposed to music which treats them as equal. I find it hard to believe that it would have "null survivability benefits"--it seems pretty useful for distinguishing the sounds of different animals.
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    not all traits have to be beneficial to persist.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      We agree on that point... what are you trying to argue?
      - hprotagonist 6y ago
        n-GP wrote: > From an evolutionary perspective, what could possibly be the reason for this? and my point is “there need not be one at all, perhaps absolute pitch is a spandrel.”
        klodolph 6y ago
        I guess I don’t understand why you’re responding to my comment, then.
acd 6y ago
Maybe the brain would be similar to machine learning “learning rate” parameter. If the learning rate was high it might lead to “overfit”? Overfit is not good for learning.

brutusborn 6y ago

Diversion of neural resources to tasks encountered more frequently perhaps? I.e. children that develop in a culture where pitch isn't important end up pruning the neurons for absolute pitch after a critical period.

klodolph 6y ago

Infants can distinguish nearly any sound in any language, but not all sounds are important. They lose the ability to distinguish sounds that they don't need to distinguish. The experiment to figure this out is pretty interesting. A native English speaker has no problem distinguishing /θ/ as in "this" from /s/ as in "sis", but not very many languages need you to make this distinction, so people who learn English later in life have a very hard time with it. Likewise, English speakers can't tell the difference between long and short vowels, or long and short consonants. That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. But you'd have a hard time learning Finnish or Japanese without it. And then there are the weird cases, like how in English we have rules for aspirating and voicing /t/ and /k/. If you speak Mandarin then you might pick out /t/ as if it were /d/, but only in certain positions. So "stop" might sound like "sdop", but "top" sounds like "top".

robocat 6y ago
> That's because there are no long and short vowels or consonants in English--the distinction doesn't matter. English has the distinction for vowels and it does matter. “can’t” and “cunt” have the same vowel sound in some accents, but “can’t” needs a long vowel sound while “cunt” needs a short vowel sound. Native English speakers speak those those two words quite distinctly. Lose/loose is another pair (confusingly “lose“ has a long vowel sound and “loose” has a short vowel sound.) Moon needs a long vowel sound to sound right. I am sure you can think of other examples.
- klodolph 6y ago
  You're right, that in some dialects it is different. But to most English dialects, "can't" and "cunt" have completely different vowels, and the length isn't distinguished. "Lose" and "loose" are also distinguished by the voicing, "lose" ends with /z/ and "loose" ends with /s/. Maybe not all dialects.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

darksaints 6y ago

Why do you assume there is an evolutionary basis for this? Evolutionary perspectives might be helpful for understanding broad genetic characteristics of entire populations. But it isn't even clear if absolute pitch is heritable, let alone anything more than a random variation with null survivability benefits.

klodolph 6y ago
Absolute pitch is heritable in the sense that nearly everyone is born with it. The theories I've heard are that we are born with absolute pitch and develop relative pitch later on, losing absolute pitch at around eight months old. We also develop the ability to associate octaves, so C and C' start sounding "alike" at some point, but this happens because we are exposed to music which treats them as equal. I find it hard to believe that it would have "null survivability benefits"--it seems pretty useful for distinguishing the sounds of different animals.
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  not all traits have to be beneficial to persist.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    We agree on that point... what are you trying to argue?
    - hprotagonist 6y ago
      n-GP wrote: > From an evolutionary perspective, what could possibly be the reason for this? and my point is “there need not be one at all, perhaps absolute pitch is a spandrel.”
      - klodolph 6y ago
        I guess I don’t understand why you’re responding to my comment, then.

acd 6y ago

Maybe the brain would be similar to machine learning “learning rate” parameter. If the learning rate was high it might lead to “overfit”? Overfit is not good for learning.