Data from: Audio-visual interactions uniquely contribute to resolution of visual conflict in people possessing absolute pitch

Individuals possessing absolute pitch (AP) are able to identify a given musical tone or to reproduce it without reference to another tone. The present study sought to learn whether this exceptional auditory ability impacts visual perception under stimulus conditions that provoke visual competition in the form of binocular rivalry. Nineteen adult participants with 3 - 19 years of musical training were divided into two groups according to their performance on a task involving identification of the specific note associated with hearing a given musical pitch. During test trials lasting just over half a minute, participants dichoptically viewed a scrolling musical score presented to one eye and a drifting sinusoidal grating presented to the other eye; throughout the trial they pressed buttons to track the alternations in visual awareness produced by these dissimilar monocular stimuli. On "pitch-congruent" trials, participants heard an auditory melody that was congruent in pitch with the visual score, on "pitch-incongruent" trials they heard a transposed auditory melody that was congruent with the score in melody but not in pitch, and on "melody-incongruent" trials they heard an auditory melody completely different from the visual score. For both groups, the visual musical scores predominated over the gratings when the auditory melody was congruent compared to when it was incongruent. Moreover, the AP participants experienced greater predominance of the visual score when it was accompanied by the pitch-congruent melody compared to the same melody transposed in pitch; for non-AP musicians, pitch-congruent and pitch-incongruent trials yielded equivalent predominance. Analysis of individual durations of dominance re-vealed differential effects on dominance and suppression durations for AP and non-AP participants. These results reveal that AP is accompanied by a robust form of bisensory interac-tion between tonal frequencies and musical notation that boosts the salience of a visual score.

具备绝对音高（Absolute Pitch, AP）的个体，无需参照其他乐音即可识别或复刻给定的音乐音调。本研究旨在探究，这种非凡的听觉能力在引发双眼竞争（binocular rivalry）形式的视觉竞争刺激条件下，是否会对视觉知觉产生影响。本研究招募了19名具备3至19年音乐训练时长的成年被试，根据其在「识别特定音调对应听觉音高」任务中的表现，将其分为两组。在单次时长略超过半分钟的测试试次中，被试接受双眼分视刺激：一只眼呈现滚动播放的乐谱，另一只眼呈现漂移正弦光栅（drifting sinusoidal grating）；整个试次过程中，被试需通过按键追踪由这两种不同单眼刺激引发的视觉觉知交替变化。在「音高一致（pitch-congruent）」试次中，被试听到的听觉旋律与视觉乐谱的音高完全匹配；在「音高不一致（pitch-incongruent）」试次中，被试听到的是经过移调的听觉旋律，其旋律结构与视觉乐谱一致，但音高并不匹配；而在「旋律不一致（melody-incongruent）」试次中，被试听到的听觉旋律与视觉乐谱完全无关。相较于听觉旋律与视觉刺激不匹配的试次，当听觉旋律匹配时，两组被试的视觉乐谱均比正弦光栅更具感知优势。此外，绝对音高被试在伴随音高一致旋律的试次中，其视觉乐谱的感知优势相较于经音高移调的同款旋律试次更为显著；而非绝对音高的音乐家在音高一致与音高不一致试次中，感知优势程度并无显著差异。对单次优势持续时长的分析显示，绝对音高与非绝对音高被试在视觉优势持续时长和感知抑制持续时长上受到了不同的影响。上述结果表明，绝对音高能力伴随着音调频率与乐谱符号之间一种强烈的双感官交互作用，该作用能够提升视觉乐谱的感知显著性。