The Tritone Paradox: An Influence of Language on Music Perception Author(s): Diana Deutsch Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), pp. 335- 347 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40285517 . Accessed: 01/10/2013 08:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Tue, 1 Oct 2013 08:21:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Music Perception © 1991 by the regents of the Summer 1991, Vol. 8, No. 4, 335-347 university of California The Tritone Paradox: An Influenceof Language on Music Perception DIANA DEUTSCH Universityof California,San Diego The tritoneparadox is producedwhen two tones that are relatedby a half-octave(or tritone)are presentedin succession.Each tone is com- posed of a set of octave-relatedharmonics, whose amplitudesare de- terminedby a bell-shapedspectral envelope; thus the tones are clearly definedin terms of pitch class, but poorly definedin terms of height. When listenersjudge whether such tone pairs form ascendingor de- scendingpatterns, their judgmentsgenerally show systematicrelation- ships to the positionsof the tones along the pitch-classcircle: Tones in one region of the circle are heard as higherand those in the opposite regionare heardas lower. However,listeners disagree substantially as to whethera giventone pairforms an ascendingor a descendingpattern, and thereforeas to which tones are heardas higherand which as lower. This paperdemonstrates that the basis for the individualdifferences in perceptionof this musicalpattern lies in the languagespoken by the listener.Two groupsof subjectsmade judgments of the tritoneparadox. One grouphad grownup in California,and the othergroup had grown up in southernEngland. It was found that when the Californian group tendedto hearthe patternas ascendingthe Englishgroup tended to hear it as descending,and when the Californiangroup tended to hear the patternas descendingthe Englishgroup tended to hear it as ascending. Thisfinding, coupled with the earlierresults of Deutsch,North, and Ray (1990) that showed a correlatebetween perception of the tritonepar- adox and the pitch rangeof the listener'sspontaneous speaking voice, indicatesstrongly that the same, culturallyacquired representation of pitch classesinfluences both speechproduction and perceptionof this musicalpattern. paperreports the first demonstration,to the author'sknowledge, that perceptionof music can be influencedby the language spoken by the listener. It shows that two groups of listeners who grew up in differentlinguistic subculturesperceive the identical musical pattern in strikinglydifferent ways. Requestsfor reprintsmay be sent to Diana Deutsch,Department of Psychology,Uni- versityof California,San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109. 335 This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Tue, 1 Oct 2013 08:21:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 336 Diana Deutsch The pattern used to demonstratethis relationshipis known as the tri- tone paradox (Deutsch, 1986, 1987; Deutsch, Kuyper,& Fisher, 1987; Deutsch, North, & Ray, 1990). It consists of two successivelypresented tones that are relatedby a half-octave,or tritone. For example, C might be presentedfollowed by Fjt,or D followed by G|t, and so on. Each tone is composedof a set of harmonicsthat standin octave relation,and whose amplitudesare scaled by a fixed, bell-shapedspectral envelope (Figure1). The tones are thereforewell-defined in termsof pitch class (C, C#, D, and so on) but are poorly definedin termsof height.When listenersdetermine whether such tone pairs form ascending or descendingpatterns, their judgmentsusually display systematicrelationships to the positions of the tones along the pitch-classcircle: Tones in one region of the circle are heard as higher and tones in the opposite region are heard as lower. However, there is strikingdisagreement among listenersas to which pat- terns are heard as ascendingand which as descending,and thereforeas to which tones are heardas higherand which as lower. For example,some listeners hear the pattern Ctt-G as ascending and the pattern G-C)t as descending,so that for these listeners,pitch class G is heardas higherand Fig. 1. Spectralcomposition of a tone pairproducing the tritoneparadox. Here the spectral envelopeis centeredat C5. The uppergraph representsa tone of pitch class D, and the lower graph representsa tone of pitch class Gjt. This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Tue, 1 Oct 2013 08:21:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The TritoneParadox 337 pitch class CJtas lower. However, other listenershear the pattern Ctt-G as descendingand the patternG-Ctt as ascending,so that for these listeners the converseholds: pitch class Cjtis heard as higherand pitch class G as lower. The tritone paradox has been found to occur in the large majorityof subjectsin a sizeable population, showing that the phenomenonis not confinedto a few selectedindividuals (Deutsch et al., 1987). Within this population, no correlatewith musical training was obtained, either in terms of the size of the effect, or its direction,or the probabilityof ob- taining it. These findings indicate strongly that the phenomenonis not musical in origin. A numberof studies have also ruled out explanations in termsof low-level characteristicsof the hearingmechanism. For many subjects,the profiles relating pitch class to perceivedheight are largely unalteredwhen the position of the spectral envelope is shifted over a three-octaverange (Deutsch,1987). In addition,the profilesare unrelated to patternsof relativeloudness for the harmoniccomponents of the tones when these are comparedindividually (Deutsch, in preparation). A numberof informalobservations led the author to hypothesizethat perceptionof the tritone paradox might be related to the processingof speech sounds. Specifically,it was conjecturedthat the listener develops a long-termrepresentation of the pitch rangeof his or her speakingvoice, and that includedin this representationis a delimitationof the octave band in which the largest proportion of pitch values occurs. It was further conjecturedthat the pitch classes delimitingthis octave band for speech are taken as definingthe highestposition along the pitch class circle, and that this in turn determinesthe orientationof the pitch class circle with respect to height. A study was undertakento test this hypothesis (Deutschet al., 1990, see also Deutsch, 1989). Subjectswere selected who showed clear rela- tionships between pitch class and perceivedheight in making judgments of the tritone paradox. A 15-min recordingof spontaneousspeech was taken from each subject, and from this recordingthe octave band con- taining the largest number of pitch values was determined.Comparing acrosssubjects, a significantcorrespondence was indeedobtained between the pitch classesdelimiting this octave band for speech and those defining the highest position along the pitch-classcircle, as determinedby judg- ments of the tritone paradox. The findingsfrom this experimentare in accordancewith the hypothesis that perceptionof the tritoneparadox is based on a representationof the pitch-classcircle by the listener,whose orientationis relatedto the pitch range of his or her speakingvoice. Two versions of this hypothesismay then be advanced.The first, and more restricted,version does not assume that the listener'svocal range for speech is itself determinedby such an acquiredtemplate. The second, and broader,version assumes that this This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Tue, 1 Oct 2013 08:21:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 338 Diana Deutsch template is acquireddevelopmentally through exposure to speech pro- ducedby others, and that it is used both to evaluateperceived speech, and also to constrainthe listener'sown speech output. The characteristicsof this learnedtemplate would thereforebe expectedto vary acrosslinguistic groups, in a fashion similarto other speech characteristicssuch as vowel quality. On this line of reasoning,the orientationof the pitch-classcircle with respect to height, as reflectedin judgmentsof the tritone paradox, should be similarfor individualswithin a linguisticgroup, but shouldvary for individualsacross linguistic groups. Evidencefor the second hypothesiswas provided in the earlierstudy of Deutschet al. (1987). An orderlydistribution of peak pitch classes1was found among a sizeablegroup of subjectswho were undergraduatesat the Universityof California,San Diego. As shown in Figure 2, C# and D occurredmost frequentlyas peakpitch classes,the frequencyof occurrence of the other pitch classes falling off on either side of these. Althoughno informationwas obtainedconcerning the linguisticbackgrounds of these subjects,it can be assumedthat the majorityhad grown up in California and were from the same linguistic subculture.