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.

拥有绝对音高（absolute pitch, AP）的个体，可在无需参照其他乐音的前提下，识别给定乐音或复刻其音高。本研究旨在探究，这种非凡的听觉能力在以双眼竞争（binocular rivalry）形式引发视觉竞争的刺激条件下，是否会对视觉感知产生影响。本研究招募19名拥有3至19年音乐训练经历的成年被试，根据其在「识别特定听觉音高对应音符」任务中的表现，将被试分为两组。在时长略超过半分钟的测试试次中，被试通过双眼分视范式接收刺激：一只眼呈现滚动的视觉乐谱，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意识交替现象。实验设置三类试次：在「音高一致（pitch-congruent）」试次中，被试聆听与视觉乐谱音高匹配的听觉旋律；在「音高不一致（pitch-incongruent）」试次中，被试聆听经过移调的听觉旋律——该旋律在旋律轮廓上与视觉乐谱一致，但音高并不匹配；在「旋律不一致（melody-incongruent）」试次中，被试聆听与视觉乐谱完全无关的听觉旋律。实验结果显示：相较于听觉旋律与视觉刺激不匹配的条件，当听觉旋律与视觉乐谱匹配时，两组被试的视觉乐谱均占据更高的感知优势度。此外，绝对音高（AP）被试在视觉乐谱伴随音高一致的旋律时，其视觉乐谱的感知优势度，相较于该旋律经移调后的情况更为显著；而非绝对音高的音乐家，在音高一致与音高不一致试次中的感知优势度并无显著差异。对单个感知优势持续时长的分析表明，绝对音高（AP）与非绝对音高被试的感知优势时长和抑制时长受到了差异化影响。本研究结果揭示：拥有绝对音高（AP）的个体，其音调频率与乐谱符号间存在稳健的双感官交互作用，该交互可提升视觉乐谱的感知显著性。