Deutsch Diana, *15 February 1938 London, American music psychologist. In 1956–59, she studied at the University of Oxford (England), and in 1970, she obtained a PhD from the University of California in San Diego. In 1971, she was employed at this university as a research employee, in 1989–2009 professor of psychology, and from 2009 as professor emerita. She was the co-founder of the quarterly “Music Perception” in 1983, its editor in 1983–95, co-founder in 1990 and president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in 1990–92.
Deutsch is one of the world’s leading specialists in the field of music psychology and musical psychoacoustics. She is the author of over 200 scientific publications and the editor of scientific monographs, including the fundamental monograph The Psychology of Music. Her research activities cover three areas: short-term memory for the pitch of single sounds and sound sequences, absolute pitch and auditory illusions in the perception of music and speech. In her works on short-term memory, she described the structure of the memory system and the principles of remembering heights. In her research on absolute pitch, she showed that one of the factors contributing to the development of absolute pitch is using a tone language as a native language (like some Asian languages, including Vietnamese and Mandarin). Deutsch made a major contribution to the development of knowledge about cognitive processes in the perception of music and speech sounds. In her works, she described various types of auditory illusions occurring in the perception of music and speech and presented the cognitive mechanisms of illusion formation. Recordings of examples of sound illusions were released by the author on two CDs.
Deutsch has been honoured with numerous prestigious distinctions and scientific awards, including the Rudolf Arnheim Award from the American Psychological Association (2004), the Gustav Theodor Fechner Award from the International Society of Empirical Aesthetics (2008), the Acoustical Society of America Award (2011) and the Audio Engineering Society Gold Medal (2016).
Books
Physiological Psychology, with J. A. Deutsch, Illinois, 1st ed. 1966, 2nd ed., 1973.
Short Term Memory, with J. A. Deutsch, New York (1975)
Musical Illusions and Phantom Words: How Music and Speech Unlock Mysteries of the Brain, Oxford, 2019
Books’ editing
The Psychology of Music, 1st ed. New York 1982, 2nd ed. San Diego 1999, 3rd ed. San Diego 2013
Articles in science magazines
Music Recognition, “Psychological Review” 76, 1969
Dislocation of Tones in a Musical Sequence: a Memory Illusion, “Nature” 226, 1970
Tones and Numbers: Specificity of Interference in Immediate Memory, “Science” 168, 1970
Musical Illusions, “Scientific American,” 233 1975
Two-Channel Listening to Musical Scales, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 57, 1975
Interactive Effects in Memory for Harmonic Intervals, “Perception and Psychophysics” 24, 1978
Octave Generalization and Melody Identification, “Perception and Psychophysics 23, 1978
Lateralization by Frequency for Repeating Sequences of Dichotic 400-Hz and 800-Hz Tones “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 63, 1978
Auditory Illusions and Audio, “Journal of the Audio Engineering Society” 31, 1983
Octave Equivalence and the Processing of Tonal Sequences, with R. C. Boulanger, “Music Perception” 2, 1984
Dichotic Listening to Melodic Patterns and its Relationship to Hemispheric Specialization of Function, “Music Perception” 3, 1985
A Musical Paradox, “Music Perception” 3, 1986
The Tritone Paradox: Effects of Spectral Variables, “Perception & Psychophysics” 41, 1987
The Semitone Paradox, „Music Perception” 6, 1988
Paradoxes of Musical Pitch, “Scientific American” 267, 1992
The Tritone Paradox: Some Further Geographical Correlates, “Music Perception” 12, 1994
The Octave Illusion Revisited Again, “Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance” 30, 2004
Absolute Pitch Among American and Chinese Conservatory Students: Prevalence Differences, and Evidence for a Speech-Related Critical Period, with T. Henthorn, E. Marvin and H.-S. Xu, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119, 2006.
Pitch Circularity from Tones Comprising Full Harmonic Series, with K. Dooley and T. Henthorn, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 124, 2008
Illusory Transformation from Speech to Song, with T. Henthorn and R. Lapidis, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 129, 2011
Absolute Pitch Correlates with High Performance on Interval Naming Tasks, with K. Dooley, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 130, 2011
Absolute Pitch is Associated with a Large Auditory Digit Span: A Clue to its Genesis, with K. Dooley, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 133, 2013
Absolute Pitch Among Students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music: A Large-Scale Direct-Test Study, with X. Li and J. Shen, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 134, 2013
Absolute Pitch is Disrupted by a Memory Illusion, with M. Edelstein, K. Dooley and T. Henthorn, “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America” 149, 2021
CDs
Musical Illusions and Paradoxes, 1995.
Phantom Words and Other Curiosities, 2003
