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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute?

Can you name those notes? Probably not. Perhaps one in ten thousand speakers of European languages has perfect pitch - the ability to recognize a note without having heard any reference note first. But there's a much better chance you could successfully name the notes if you are a fluent speaker of an East Asian tonal language, such as Vietnamese, Mandarin¹ or Cantonese. That's the finding of a study by U.C. San Diego and U.S.C. researchers presented May 21st at the Acoustical² Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. Two hundred three U.S.C music students listened to musical notes. The Asian musicians who spoke³ a tone language fluently exhibited almost perfect perfect pitch, far outperforming Caucasian fluent in a non-tone language like English. And they also outdid other musicians of Asian ancestry⁴ who did not speak a tonal language. So it would seem that perfect pitch is more nurture⁵ than nature. By the way the notes are D, E & G, assuming that your MP3 player is in tune⁶.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I am Steve Mirsky.