Diana Deutsch

 

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Psychology Dept 0109
University of California
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0109

 

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(858) 453-1558
(858) 534-4615
(858) 453-4763

ddeutsch@ucsd.edu



Absolute Pitch Is Associated with a Large Auditory Digit Span: A Clue to Its Genesis

The Speech- to-Song Illusion

Perfect Pitch: Language Wins Out Over Genetics

The Glissando Illusion: A Spatial Illusory Contour in Hearing

Perfect Pitch in Tone Language Speakers Carries Over to Music

Tone Language Speakers Possess Absolute Pitch

Mothers and Their Children Hear Musical Illusion in Strikingly Similar Ways

 

image Psychology Web Site
image Musical Illusions and Paradoxes CD
image Phantom Words and Other Curiosities CD
image Some Media Descriptions
image Related Sites

image Honors, Activities
image Publications
image Research and Musical Illusions Demonstrations
image Memory for pitch and music



Diana Deutsch


Diana Deutsch is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and conducts research on perception and memory for sounds, particularly music. She has discovered a number of musical illusions and paradoxes, which include the octave illusion, the scale illusion, the glissando illusion, the tritone paradox,  the cambiata illusion, the phantom words illusion and the speech-to-song illusion, among others. She also explores ways in which we hold musical information in memory,  and  in which we relate the sounds of music and speech to each other. Much of her current  research  focuses on the question of absolute pitch - why some people  possess it, and why  it is so rare. (See, for example, recent work comparing the prevalence of absolute pitch in speakers of tone language and non-tone language).

Deutsch obtained a First Class Honors B.A. in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology  from the University of California, San DiegoShe has over 150 written publications, including  books, book chapters, and articles. She is Editor of the book The Psychology of MusicAcademic Press, 1982, 2nd Edition 1999, (see review), 3rd Edition 2013, (see review), and author of the compact  discs Musical Illusions  and Paradoxes (1995) and Phantom Words and Other Curiosities (2003) see review of both CDs.

Deutsch has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the American Psychological Society, and the American Psychological Association.  She has served as Governor of the Audio Engineering Society, as Chair of the Section on Psychology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as President of Division 10 of the American Psychological  Association  (Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts), and as Chair of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. She is Founding Editor of the journal Music Perception,  and  served  as Founding President of the Society for Music Perception and CognitionShe was awarded the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts by the American Psychological Association in 2004, the Gustav Theodor Fechner Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Aesthetics by the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics in 2008, and the Science Writing Award for Professionals in Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America in 2011.

 

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