Babies Born with Perfect Pitch
It is likely that everyone is born with perfect pitch and then loses it as they grow older.
This theory has been put forward by psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who think perfect, or absolute, pitch — the ability to precisely recognise musical notes — helps babies to learn to speak.
Once this task is achieved, perfect pitch is lost — unless it is deliberately cultivated in some way, either by learning a musical instrument or by speaking a language that conveys subtle meaning with different tones.
As part of their studies, the researchers played adults and eight-month-old babies long sequences of musical notes.
They found that if they changed the sequence only slightly, the adults could not tell the difference — but the babies could.
They could tell this because it was well documented that babies got bored if they heard the same thing too often — their attentions strayed.
In the experiments, Professor Jenny Saffran and colleagues found that if they played the babies a slightly new series of notes after repeating the old sequence a few times, the babies would recognise this and give the music their full attention again.
“Perfect Pitch May Help Babies Speak,” by Jonathan Amos