Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Strategies for identifying pitch and chords can be understood in relation to a shared local–global processing dimension. Absolute pitch (AP) and pitch-element identification tend to reflect more local strategies, whereas relative pitch (RP) and harmonic-function identification tend to rely more strongly on global strategies. The present study examined whether individual internal dominance in pitch identification strategies is associated with corresponding dominance in chord identification strategies. Twenty-one professionally trained musicians completed pitch identification tasks (AP and RP) and chord identification tasks requiring either pitch-element or harmonic-function judgments. Individual dominance was indexed using residual-based measures to dissociate identification bias from overall ability. Dominance in local versus global pitch identification was significantly associated with corresponding dominance in chord identification across accuracy and reaction time. Analyses based on raw scores showed consistent directional trends, though most did not reach statistical significance. Overall, the findings suggest that pitch- and chord-level identification strategies interact along a shared local–global dimension, highlighting the role of individual processing dominance in musical identification.