Processing of pitch deviations

The N300-P600 observed for out-of-tune final tones is in agreement with previous results observed for detection of pitch deviations. Notably, Schön, Magne and Besson (2004) found that a pitch deviation by one fifth of a tone (20 cents, a bit larger than the 13-cents pitch deviation used in the present study) at the end of melodies elicited a negativity around 200 ms followed by a positivity between 200 and 800 ms. Besson et al. (2007) reports that pitch discrimination is associated with N300-P600 components in 8-year-old children who were given six months of musical training. These components are similar to the results of Tervaniemi et al. (2005), who investigated the detection of mistunings as small as ours (also 0.76%, i.e. 13 cents) in an oddball paradigm. These authors found that mistuning was associated with a N2b-P3 complex. The N2b-P3 has been associated with attentional decision-making processes (Woldorff, 1999), so it may reflect the conscious detection of the pitch violation and its categorization as a “different” response for the behavioral task.