No, this is relative pitch. You might be singing it in the wrong key. That's why you can sing something a capella and it sounds right and then you add an instrument playing the correct notes and it doesn't.
Close your eyes and try to imagine a song that you know really well. Imagine the original version playing on your phone/mp3 player/cd/record. Pick a stable note from that song (for me, the third note of the beginning of "Tears in Heaven" is a solid A.) Try to sing it and match the pitch in your head.
As you practice it you'll get better, and do it faster, and over time even be able to recognize it in the wild.
This might not be something you personally can do, but for those who have memorized a song in that way it's a convenient way of demonstrating that perfect pitch isn't as unattainable as it might seem.
I think what it is, is that it's murky whether perfect pitch is the ability to name notes, or the capacity to learn to be able to. Historical thinking has mostly been that the two are the same, however I'm referring to it more as the former whereas you're referring to it more like the latter.
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the two aren't the same, which is more or less what's being supported by the paper. People might have the capacity to learn the ability (as the 'listen to a song in your head' exercise I described aims to demonstrate) and think they don't, because the common perception is that if you don't have the ability you don't have the capacity to learn it. Or something like that.
> Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is the ability to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. [Wikipedia]
This is what I'm describing: knowing a song well enough that you can 'hear' it in your head, and use that to accurately identify and re-create a note from it. This is a few more steps than being able to simply 'know' a note upon hearing it but nonetheless can demonstrate the capacity to do so for those who haven't specifically practiced it.
It's literally the first line of the abstract:
> Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the pitch of a tone without external references.
That's not what this study is talking about. Click the link and read the first line of the abstract:
> Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the pitch of a tone without external references.
Lot of people are getting downvoted throughout this thread, but they're right. Absolute pitch in the context of this study is strictly about identifying heard tones.
You also cannot self-evaluate your ability to sing or recreate a specific pitch. You need an actual reference tone and an ability to measure it.
Most people will self-rate their singing pitch as being accurate, but when you introduce a calibrated reference tone and measure, it's a different story.
Also note that absolute pitch requires identifying 12 tones across an octave. Again, not as simple as singing your favorite song.