Interference in memory for tonal pitch: Implications for a working-memory model

The degree of interference caused by different kinds of stimuli on memory for tonal pitch was studied. Musically trained and untrained subjects heard a sequence of two tones separated by an interval of 5 sec. The tones were either identical in pitch or differed by a semitone. Subjects had to decide whether the tones were identical or not. The interval was filled with tonal, verbal, or visual material under attended and unattended conditions. The results revealed clear group differences. Musically trained subjects' retention of the first test tone was only affected by the interposition of other tones. In contrast, the performance of musically untrained subjects was also affected by verbal and visual items. The findings are discussed in the framework of Baddeley's (1986) working-memory model.     

Effects of harmonics on relative pitch discrimination in a musical context

The contribution of different harmonics to pitch salience in a musical context was examined by requiring subjects to discriminate a small (1/4 semitone) pitch change in one note of a melody that repeated in transposition. In Experiment 1, performance was superior when more harmonics were present (first five vs. fundamental alone) and when the second harmonic (of tones consisting of the first two harmonics) was in tune compared with when it was out of tune. In Experiment 2, the effects of harmonics 6 and 8, which stand in octave-equivalent simple ratios to the fundamental (2∶3 and 1∶2, respectively) were compared with harmonics 5 and 7, which stand in more complex ratios (4:5 and 4:7, respectively). When the harmonics fused into a single percept (tones consisting of harmonics 1, 2, and one of 5, 6, 7, or 8), performance was higher when harmonics 6 or 8 were present than when harmonics 5 or 7 were present. When the harmonics did not fuse into a single percept (tones consisting of the fundamental and one of 5, 6, 7, or 8), there was no effect of ratio simplicity.     

The psychological representation of musical pitch in a tonal context

In this series of experiments, evidence was found for a complex psychological representation of musical pitch. The results of a scaling study, in which subjects judged the similarities between pairs of tones presented in an explicitly tonal context, suggest that musical listeners extract a pattern of relationships among tones that is determined not only by pitch height and chroma, but also by membership in the major triad chord and the diatonic scale associated with the tonal system of the context. Multidimensional scaling of the similarity ratings gave a three-dimensional conical structure around which the tones were ordered according to pitch height. The major triad components formed a closely related cluster near the vertex of the cone; the remaining diatonic scale tones formed a less closely related subset farther from the vertex; and, the nondiatonic tones, still farther from the vertex, were widely dispersed. The results also suggest that, in the psychological representation, tones less closely related to the tonality are less stable than tones closely related to the tonality, and that the representation incorporates the tendency for unstable tones to move toward the more stable tones in time, reflecting the dynamic character of musical tones. In the similarity ratings of the scaling study, tones less related to the tonality were judged more similar to tones more related to the tonality than the reverse temporal order. Furthermore, in a delayed recognition task memory performance for nondiatonic tones was less accurate than for diatonic tones, and nondiatonic tones were more often confused with diatonic tones than diatonic tones were confused with nondiatonic tones. These results indicate the tonality-specific nature of the psychological representation and argue that the perception of music depends not only on psychoacoustic properties of the tones, but also on processes that relate the tones to one another through contact with a well-defined and complex psychological representation of musical pitch.     

Absolute identification of notes and intervals by musicians

Speech sounds are judged reliably and absolutely, while the judgment of nonspeech stimuli, such as tones, is thought to be unreliable and dependent on contextual cues. Here we demonstrated that the judgment of tonal stimuli may also be reliable and absolute, provided that the subjects are trained musicians. In Experiment 1, musicians with relative pitch identified 21 tonal intervals ranging from unison to major third, and the resulting identification functions were similar to those that have been previously obtained for speech. In Experiment 3, the judgment of intervals by musicians was shown to be free of context effects, since the best subjects gave virtually identical judgments to the same intervals in two stimulus contexts. Similar results were obtained in Experiments 2 and 4 for the judgment of single tones by possessors of absolute pitch. Performance with both notes and intervals by nonmusicians, however, was unreliable and greatly influenced by context. These findings suggest that musicians acquire categories for pitch that are functionally similar to phonemic categories for speech     

The effect of task and pitch structure on pitch-time interactions in music

Musical pitch-time relations were explored by investigating the effect of temporal variation on pitch perception. In Experiment 1, trained musicians heard a standard tone followed by a tonal context and then a comparison tone. They then performed one of two tasks. In the cognitive task, they indicated whether the comparison tone was in the key of the context. In the perceptual task, they judged whether the comparison tone was higher or lower than the standard tone. For both tasks, the comparison tone occurred early, on time, or late with respect to temporal expectancies established by the context. Temporal variation did not affect accuracy in either task. Experiment 2 used the perceptual task and varied the pitch structure by employing either a tonal or an atonal context. Temporal variation did not affect accuracy for tonal contexts, but did for atonal contexts. Experiment 3 replicated these results and controlled potential confounds. We argue that tonal contexts bias attention toward pitch and eliminate effects of temporal variation, whereas atonal contexts do not, thus fostering pitch-time interactions. Psychonomic Society, Inc.     

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context

Listeners rated test tones falling in the octave range from middle to high C according to how well each completed a diatonic C major scale played in an adjacent octave just before the final test tone. Ratings were well explained in terms of three factors. The factors were distance in pitch height from the context tones, octave equivalence, and the following hierarchy of tonal functions: tonic tone, other tones of the major triad chord, other tones of a diatonic scale, and the nondiatonic tones. In these ratings, pitch height was more prominent for less musical listeners or with less musical (sinusoidal) tones, whereas octave equivalence and the tonal hierarchy prevailed for musical listeners, especially with harmonically richer tones. Ratings for quarter tones interpolated halfway between the halftone steps of the standard chromatic scale were approximately the averages of ratings for adjacent chromatic tones, suggesting failure to discriminate tones at this fine level of division.     

Separate "what" and "where" decision mechanisms in processing a dichotic tonal sequence.

Right-handed subjects were presented with a dichotic tonal sequence, whose basic pattern consisted of three 800-Hz tones followed by two 400-Hz tones on the channel and simultaneously three 400-Hz tones followed by two 800-Hz tones on the other. All tones were 250 msec in duration and separated by 250-msec pauses. On any given stimulus presentation, most subjects reported the sequence of pitches delivered to one ear and ignored the other. They further tended significantly to report the sequence delivered to the right ear rather than to the left. However, each tone appeared to be localized in the ear receiving the higher frequency, regardless of which ear was followed for pitch and regardless of whether the higher or lower frequency was in fact perceived.     

Music-to-language transfer effect: may melodic ability improve learning of tonal languages by native nontonal speakers?

In tonal languages, as Mandarin Chinese and Thai, word meaning is partially determined by lexical tones. Previous studies suggest that lexical tones are processed by native listeners as linguistic information and not as pure tonal information. This study aims at verifying if, in nontonal languages speakers, the discrimination of lexical Mandarin tones varies in function of the melodic ability. Forty-six students with no previous experience of Mandarin or any other tonal language were presented with two short lists of spoken monosyllabic Mandarin words and invited to perform a same–different task trying to identify whether the variation were phonological or tonal. Main results show that subjects perform significantly better in identifying phonological variations rather than tonal ones and interestingly, the group with a high melodic ability (assessed by Wing subtest 3) shows a better performance exclusively in detecting tonal variations.     

Effects of Phonetic Similarity in the Identification of Mandarin Tones

Tonal languages differ in how they use phonetic correlates e.g. average pitch height and pitch direction, for tonal contrasts. Thus, native speakers of a tonal language may need to adjust their attention to familiar or unfamiliar phonetic cues when perceiving non-native tones. On the other hand, speakers of a non-tonal language may need to develop sensitivity to tonal correlates absent from their native system. The current study examines and compares five language groups’ perception of two synthesized Mandarin tones: the high level tone and the high falling tone. It aims to examine how listeners from tonal and non-tonal backgrounds identify and categorize acoustically equidistant pitches varying along two phonetic dimensions: pitch onset and slope. Results reveal “universal” perceptual patterns across groups and also tendencies caused by native tonal systems. Our findings confirm that L1 tonal and prosodic systems affect speakers’ sensitivity to novel perceptual cues and their abilities to discern relevant phonetic differences.     

Sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range

Striking changes in sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range are reported. Participants were presented a key-defining context (do-mi-do-sol) followed by one of the 12 chromatic tones of the octave, and rated the goodness of fit of the probe tone to the context. The set of ratings, called the probe-tone profile, was compared to an established standardised profile for the Western tonal hierarchy. The presentation of context and probe tones at low and high pitch registers resulted in significantly reduced sensitivity to tonality. Sensitivity was especially poor for presentations in the lowest octaves where inharmonicity levels were substantially above the threshold for detection. We propose that sensitivity to tonality may be influenced by pitch salience (or a co-varying factor such as exposure to pitch distributional information) as well as suprathreshold inharmonicity.     

Tonal expectations influence pitch perception

In this study, we investigated the influence of tonal relatedness on pitch perception in melodies. Tonal expectations for target tones were manipulated in melodic contexts while controlling sensory expectations, thus allowing us to assess specifically the influence oftonal expectations on pitch perception. Three experimentsprovided converging evidence that tonal relatedness modulates pitch perception in nonmusician listeners. Experiment 1 showed, with a rating task, the influence of the tonal relatedness of a target tone on listeners' judgments of tuning/mistuning. Experiment 2 showed, with a priming task, that pitch processing of in-tune tones was faster for tonally related targets than for less related targets. Experiment 3 showed, with a comparison task, that discrimination performance for small mistunings was better when the to-be-compared tones were tonally related to the melodic context. Findings are discussed in relation to psychoacoustic research on contextual pitch perception and to studies showing facilitation of early processing steps via knowledge- and attention-related processes.     

Infants' perception of timbre: classification of complex tones by spectral structure

Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age were tested for their discrimination of timbre or sound quality differences in the context of variable exemplars. They were familiarized with a set of complex tones with specified spectral structure; members of the set varied in fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration. Infants were then tested for their detection of tones that contrasted in spectral structure but were similar in other respects. They successfully differentiated the two spectral structures in the context of these variations, indicating that they can classify tonal stimuli on the basis of timbre. When the stimuli were organized into arbitrary categories, infants were unable to differentiate these categories, indicating that their performance with nonarbitrary categories was not attributable to memorization of the familiarized set.     

Cross-octave masking of single tones and musical sequences: The effects of structure on auditory recognition

A series of experiments explored the role of structural information in the auditory recognition process, within the context of a backward recognition masking paradigm. A masking tone presented after a test tone has been found to interfere with the perceptual processing of the test tone, the degree of interference decreasing with increased durations of the silent intertone interval between the test and masking tones. In the current studies, the task was modified to utilize three-tone sequences as the test stimuli. Six test sequences were employed (LMH, LHM, MLH, MHL, HLM, HML), where L, M, and H represent the lowest, middle, and highest frequencies in the melody. The observers identified these six possible sequences when the three tones of the test sequence were interleaved with three presentations of a single masking tone. All three tones of the test sequence were drawn from the same octave, while the masking tones could be drawn from any of three octaves, symmetrical around the octave containing the test tones. Under these conditions, interference occurred primarily from masking tones drawn from the same octave as the test tones. Masking tones drawn from other octaves were found to produce little, if any, interference with perception of the test tones. This effect was found to occur only for the identification of tonal sequences. Substantial masking of single-tone targets occurred with masking tones drawn from octaves other than that containing the targets. The results make apparent the use of structural information during auditory recognition. A theoretical interpretation was advanced which suggests that, while single tones are perceived on the basis of absolute pitch, the presence of auditory structure may allow relational information, such as exact pitch intervals or melodic contour, to facilitate perception of the tonal sequence.     

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel 2003, 2008, 2012).     

Context sensitivity and invariance in perception of octave-ambiguous tones

Three experiments investigated the influence of unambiguous (UA) context tones on the perception of octave-ambiguous (OA) tones. In Experiment 1, pairs of OA tones spanning a tritone interval were preceded by pairs of UA tones instantiating a rising or falling interval between the same pitch classes. Despite the inherent ambiguity of OA tritone pairs, most participants showed little or no priming when judging the OA tritone as rising or falling. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants compared the pitch heights of single OA and UA tones representing either the same pitch class or being a tritone apart. These judgments were strongly influenced by the pitch range of the UA tones, but only slightly by the spectral center of the OA tones. Thus, the perceived pitch height of single OA tones is context sensitive, but the perceived relative pitch height of two OA tones, as described in previous research on the “tritone paradox,” is largely invariant in UA tone contexts.     

Anchoring effects in music: The resolution of dissonance

Most pieces of music induce in the listener a sense that some pitches sound consonant, stable, or final, while others sound more dissonant, unstable, or transient. A psychological account of the intuition that the dissonance of an unstable tone is sometimes “resolved” by following it by a stable tone that is close in pitch is provided. The perceived hierarchy differentiating tones on the basis of stability may be construed as a cognitive schema, which facilitates the encoding of some tones relative to others. A cognitive principle, melodic anchoring, which specifies the ordered relationships (between tones) that govern (i) the activation of one tonal schema over another and (ii) the assimilation or anchoring of unstable tones to the tonal schema once it has been activated is presented. In a forcedchoice paradigm, the principle is invoked to predict which chord is perceived to “underlie” a sequence that is tonally ambiguous in all respects except the ordered relationships between its tones. In a same-different task, subjects were presented with a pair of tonal sequences. When a stable tone was replaced by an unstable tone, more confusions occurred when the latter was anchored than when it was not. The accuracy advantage when the unstable tone was in the comparison as opposed to the standard sequence was lower when the unstable tone was anchored than when it was not. Finally, subjects rated how well a sequence and a chord sounded together. Melodies that contained an unstable tone were given higher ratings when the unstable tone was anchored than when it was not. Each paradigm was used to demonstrate first immediate and then delayed anchoring.     

Auditory perception of temporal and spectral events in patients with focal left and right cerebral lesions

The auditory perception of temporal and spectral information was studied in subjects with lesions in the temporoparietal region of the left (LH group), or right (RH group) hemisphere (n = 5 in each group) and in five normal controls. The temporal tasks included gap detection and two complex pattern perception tasks in which subjects had to identify the placement of the two closest tones (separated by the shortest interval) within a sequence of six tones. The spectral tasks involved pitch matching and frequency discrimination. The results showed a "double dissociation": (1) the LH group was impaired in their ability to perceive temporal information, but the perception of spectral information was normal, and (2) the RH group was impaired in their ability to perceive spectral information, but the perception of temporal information was normal. The findings are consistent with the notion that temporal processing is a function of left-hemisphere structures and that spectral processing is a function of right-hemisphere structures.     

Repetition priming in music

The authors explore priming effects of pitch repetition in music in 3 experiments. Musically untrained participants heard a short melody and sang the last pitch of the melody as quickly as possible. Each experiment manipulated (a) whether or not the tone to be sung (target) was heard earlier in the melody (primed) and (b) the prime-target distance (measured in events). Experiment 1 used variable-length melodies, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 used fixed-length melodies. Experiment 3 changed the timbre of the target tone. In all experiments, fast-responding participants produced repeated tones faster than nonrepeated tones, and this repetition benefit decreased as prime-target distances increased. All participants produced expected tonic endings faster than less expected nontonic endings. Repetition and tonal priming effects are compared with harmonic priming effects in music and with repetition priming effects in language.     

Reaction time to tones in tonal backgrounds and a comparison of reaction time to signal onset and offset

In order to learn more about the processing of auditory information, simple reaction time (RT) measurements were made when subjects were asked to respond to tones presented against a tonal background. In the first experiment, a counterintuitive result was obtained: with two widely separated frequencies, 1,900 and 4,000 Hz, the presence of the background facilitated RT. In a second experiment, using two frequencies which were closer together (3,500 and 4,000 Hz), slowing of RT in the presence of the background was observed, as would be expected from the literature on auditory masking. A third experiment suggested that the information carried by signal offset is not an important factor in the facilitation observed with widely separated tones. In this experiment an unexpected result was found: subjects receiving offsets in their right ears responded significantly more slowly than did subjects receiving offsets in their left ears.     

Octave generalization of specific interference effects in memory for tonal pitch

An experiment is described which demonstrates that certain highly specific disruptive effects in immediate memory for tonal pitch generalize across octaves. Pitch recognition was required after a retention interval during which six other tones were played. The effects of including in the interpolated sequence tones which were removed by exactly an octave from those which had already been demonstrated to produce disruption were investigated. Generalization of these interference effects was found to result both from tones which were displaced an octave higher and (to a lesser extent) from tones which were displaced an octave lower. It is concluded that the memory store that retains information concerning the pitch of ifidividual tones is bidimensional in nature, both “tone height” and “tone chroma” being represented.