The Effect Of The Symbol Space Position On The Pitch Judgment

Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency related scale,or more commonly,pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies.Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones,along with duration,loudness,and timbre.The ability to identify and distinguish pitch is of critical importance for music learners,which can determine whether one can appreciate and learn the music.In this regard,the perception and discrimination of pitch has assumed an important role in music education.Pitch is not a purely objective physical property;it is a rather subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sounds.The study on the perception and discrimination of pitch has been a central problem in psychoacoustics,and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation,processing,and perception in the music education.However,how symbols affects the perception of pitch has long been a topic of heated debate.In music education,words,pictures,musical instruments,and videos are often used in teaching pitch.Gestures and body movements have also been used in some novel techniques,such as Orff teaching method,Kodaly teaching method,and Dahl croze teaching method,to help students better identify and distinguish different pitches.The former emphasizes the importance of semantic information;whereas the latter emphasizes the spatial information in the perception of pitch.However,to the best of our knowledge,the relationship between symbols and the pitch perception and discrimination,although important both theoretically and practically,has received surprisingly little empirical attention over the past years.The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the orientation,semantic meanings and spatial position of a wide variety of symbols,such as arrows,points and Chinese characters,on the perception of pitch in university students.Thus,the results of this study may provide some important theoretical insights into the perception and discrimination of pitch.From an educational perspective,knowledge of how symbols affect perception and discrimination of pitch in university students can contribute to the development of more effective teaching methods.In Study 1,we investigated the effect of arrow orientation(upward,downward,leftward,and rightward)on pitch perception in professional and non-professional students.The results of Experiment 1 show that the upward and downward orientation has a significant effect on the pitch perception.However,the results of Experiment 2 show that the leftward and rightward orientation has no significant effect on the pitch perception.In addition,music majors perform better than non-music majors in pitch perception in both experiments.In Study 2,we investigated the effect of spatial position of symbols on the pitch perception in music majors and non-music majors.The procedures of Experiments 3 and 4 are basically the same,but the participants are required to complete different tasks.In both experiments,the upward or downward arrows appear above or below the fixation point.Participants are asked to identify arrow orientation in Experiment 3,but the spatial position of the arrows in Experiment 4.The results of Experiments 3 and 4 clearly show that the spatial position of arrows has a significant effect on pitch perception.In Experiment 5,points that have no orientation appear above or below the fixation point,and the effect of spatial position on pitch perception was confirmed.The results of Study 2 clearly show that the spatial information of arrows can have a profound effect on the pitch perception.Again,music majors perform better than non-music majors in pitch perception in the three experiments.Thus,teachers should take full advantages of spatial information of signals in teaching pitch.In Study 3,we investigated the effect of spatial position of Chinese characterson the pitch perception in music majors and non-music majors.Take the character"high" as an example.In music,pitch can be understood as the auditory attribute of sounds according to which sounds can be ordered on a scale from low to high.That is,"high"pitch means very rapid oscillation,and "low" pitch corresponds to slower oscillation,such as soprano;whereas in daily life,"high" can be understood semantically as the relative spatial position of an object.Experiment 6 shows that the semantic meanings of Chinese characters("high" and "low")have a significant effect on pitch perception.In Experiments?and 8,"high" and "low"appear above or below the fixation point;and the participants are instructed to determine the semantic meanings and spatial positions of these Chinese characters in Experiments 7 and 8,respectively.The results show that the spatial positions of Chinese characters have a significant effect on pitch perception.Again,music majors perform better than non-music majors in pitch perception in the experiments.Thus,the use of Chinese characters "high" and "low" may help students better understand pitch in teaching practices.In Study 4,piano pitch is changed with trumpet pitch as the stimulating material.In music performance,various pitches from the musical instruments and actors or actresses are mixed.The procedures of Experiment 9 and Experiment 10 are the same as that of Experiment 4 and Experiment 8.The results show that symbols also have significant effect on the perception of trumpet pitch perception.All these results show that the spatial position of various forms of symbols can have significant effect on the pitch perception in both music majors and non-music majors.In Study 5,we investigated the difference in the pitch perception between those autism children received music education and those received no music education.The procedure is basically the same as that of Experiment 1.Only pitch is presented,and the autism children are instructed to perform pitch perception.The results show that autism children have the ability of pitch perception.In addition,those received music education perform better than those received no music education in pitch perception.The results of our studies may extend our understanding of how symbols affects the perception and discrimination of pitch.Our study emphasizes the importance of the use of Colvin gestures,symbols,and body movement in music education.