Tinnitus not a Reference Signal in Judgments of Absolute Pitch

Abstract

An experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that judgments of absolute pitch rely on a sub-liminal tinnitus (ringing in the ears) which is used as a reference tone. In a series of 144 pairs of trials, the subject alternately measured his own tinnitus; and made absolute judgments of pitch by setting a variable tone to match the frequency of a named (target) note. He judged the frequency of the 48 notes spanning the 4 octaves from A flat = 106 Hz to G = 1584 Hz. It was found that his judgments of the pitch of named notes were significantly more accurate (P < 0.01) than had been predicted from the variability of the pitch of his tinnitus. Also, there was only a very low correlation (r = 0.246) between the absolute pitch judgments and the tinnitus settings made on the same trial. This indicates that the hypothesis is false. Nevertheless, it is argued that absolute pitch judgments may not require a channel capacity of more than 3 bits per decision.

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