International Journal of Comparative Psychology

Human

infants' perception of tone sequences or melodies is reviewed

the context

of related work with human adults and nonhuman species. For the

part,

infants use an adult-like pitch processing strategy that is global and

rather

than the local pitch strategy that is characteristic of the nonhuman species stud

date. Thus they encode and retain the pitch configuration or contour of

with

little attention to the absolute pitches of individual notes. In the case

structured melodies,

specifically, melodies that are prototypical of Western music, in

encode

more precise relations, notably the intervals or exact pitch relations be

adjacent

notes. Finally, the functional significance of relational pitch

in

human infancy is

considered

processing

tween

fants

of well

a melody,

ied

to

relational

most

in