Perception of pitch and timbre by musically trained and untrained listeners.

In 2 experiments the author investigated how musicians and nonmusicians differentially perceive the dimensions of pitch and timbre. A categorization task was used in Experiment 1 to assess Ss' ability to identify how 2 consecutively presented tones changed along these dimensions. A speeded classification task was used in Experiment 2 to measure Ss' ability to ignore or take advantage of information in 1 dimension while attending to the other. The 2 groups differed in the degree to which variation along the dimensions influenced responses. Timbre variation affected nonmusicians' judgments of pitch more than the reverse. Musicians showed no such asymmetry.