Absolute pitch can be learned by some adults
Fig 4
Comparison of the Chicago Test (combined performance on the Piano and Multiple Timbres Blocks) of the present experiment with Bermudez and Zatorre (2009), separated by testing session (Pre, Post, and Follow-Up).
The left column (“All”) represents performance across all trials, while the right column (“>8va”) represents performance on trials in which there was more than an octave separating the heard note from the previous note. An index consisting of mean absolute deviation and log response time is represented on the y-axis, while percent correct is represented on the x-axis. Prior to training, no participant was classified in the highest (“genuine”) AP group for either analysis. In the immediate test post-training, as well as in the follow-up test four months after training, participants S2 and S5 performed indistinguishably from the highest AP performers from Bermudez and Zatorre (2009), bounded by the dashed box (lower right hand corner) of each panel.