No, you've misunderstood. What people with perfect pitch are doing is a fast and more fluent version of what the other commenter describes. They may not experience or describe it that way but it's an area of interest for a lot of people and the research is clear.
> can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has
Well, and what note does a sound have? What is "a note?" Is it just a name for a specific frequency? Then why enharmonics. Is that D a little flat, or are you just tuned to A 442? Oh actually we're in 24TET over here, that's simply a quarter tone.
Sound is just a sound, you need other context to make a note. To infer a note from a pitch, someone (with perfect pitch or not) knows already or is assuming a lot of context that makes that work.
But that context isn't universal, and if it has changed they'll need to find out how and adapt to it. The fact that they can adapt is because there's no universal mapping from frequencies to notes, either in their mind or anywhere.
Having (a) talked with acquaintances who have absolute/perfect pitch (b) read a fair bit of research (c) practiced the “trick” under discussion (d) had a brief mid-adolescent period where I experienced tones as having an extra layer of color/personality that was definitely distinct from note memory, everything points me toward the idea that it’s a different way of experiencing the sound itself. Like the difference between “they all look the same to me” vs frequencies having faces you recognized or if numbers came with fixed colors. Honestly the experienced part was a bit jarring and I think that’s part of why it didn’t take.
> can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has
Well, and what note does a sound have? What is "a note?" Is it just a name for a specific frequency? Then why enharmonics. Is that D a little flat, or are you just tuned to A 442? Oh actually we're in 24TET over here, that's simply a quarter tone.
Sound is just a sound, you need other context to make a note. To infer a note from a pitch, someone (with perfect pitch or not) knows already or is assuming a lot of context that makes that work.
But that context isn't universal, and if it has changed they'll need to find out how and adapt to it. The fact that they can adapt is because there's no universal mapping from frequencies to notes, either in their mind or anywhere.