Robustness to noise reveals cross-culturally consistent properties of pitch perception for harmonic and inharmonic sounds

Abstract

Pitch is a building block of speech and music, but the extent to which pitch perception is shared across cultures is unclear. Evidence from Western participants suggests that pitch perception relies on multiple representations. For instance, harmonic tones are easier to discriminate in noise than inharmonic tones despite comparable discrimination in quiet, suggesting that different representations are used in noise and quiet. We tested whether these effects are present cross-culturally, comparing participants from the US and a Bolivian Amazonian Indigenous community (Tsimane). Participants heard two-note melodies and reproduced the melody by singing. Tones were either harmonic or inharmonic and were presented in noise or quiet. Both groups exhibited two characteristics of pitch perception previously seen in Western listeners: the direction of pitch changes could be reproduced with equal accuracy for harmonic and inharmonic tones in quiet but was better for harmonic than inharmonic tones in noise. However, replicating previous work, Tsimane vocal reproductions were much less likely to be related to the absolute pitch or chroma of the stimulus notes, differing from the tendency seen in Western participants to match pitch and/or chroma. Pitch and chroma matching behavior were more prominent in a subset of Tsimane whose responses to a demographic survey suggested greater integration with global and Bolivian markets and culture. The results demonstrate that the basic structure of pitch perception is shared across cultures despite other differences in pitch-related behavior that are plausibly driven by culture-specific experience.