3 ms·
No. The inference from "every baby in this study has perfect pitch" to "every baby has perfect pitch" is as unwarranted as "every person I have ever met is hand
by tjradcliffe 11y ago
No. The inference from "every baby in this study has perfect pitch" to "every baby has perfect pitch" is as unwarranted as "every person I have ever met is handed so ambidextrous people don't exist."
Most babies may well have better pitch than the vast majority of adults. To claim therefore that every baby has perfect pitch is sensationalist, unwarranted, and almost certainly wrong. Very poor science-reporting.
The interesting question, as always, is what the distribution is, not sweeping and almost certainly false categorical claims ("All members of category X have property Y!")
- mrob 11y agoFrom one of the studies cited: ( http://www.auditory.org/mhonarc/2004/save/pdf00001.pdf http://www.auditory.org/mhonarc/2004/save/pdf00001.pdf ) "We conclude that the potential to acquire absolute pitch is universally present at birth, and that it can be realized by enabling the infant to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for speech acquisition." The article claims "each and every one of us is born with perfect pitch", but this is not cited, and being born with absolute (aka. perfect) pitch is not the same as being born with the potential to learn absolute pitch. EDIT: Possibly evidence for babies being born with absolute pitch was hidden behind a misleading link (the "synesthesia" link). But full text is paywalled so I can't be sure: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11206435 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11206435