Performed or observed keyboard actions affect pianists' judgements of relative pitch

摘要

Action can affect visual perception if the action's expected sensory effects resemble a concurrentunstable or deviant event. To determine whether action can also change auditory perception, partici-pants were required to play pairs of octave-ambiguous tones by pressing successive keys on a piano orcomputer keyboard and to judge whether each pitch interval was rising or falling. Both pianists andnonpianist musicians gave significantly more "rising" responses when the order of key presses was left-to-right than when it was right-to-left, in accord with the pitch mapping of the piano. However, theeffect was much larger in pianists. Pianists showed a similarly large effect when they passively observedthe experimenter pressing keys on a piano keyboard, as long as the keyboard faced the participant. Theresults suggest that acquired action–effect associations can affect auditory perceptual judgement.