Perceiving musical tension in long chord sequences

We attempted to predict perceived musical tension in longer chord sequences by hierarchic and sequential models based on Lerdahl and Jackendoff's and Lerdahl's cognitive theories and on Parncutt's sensory-psychoacoustical theory. Musicians and nonmusicians were asked to rate the perceived tension of chords which were drawn either from a piece composed for the study (Exp. 1) or from a Chopin Prelude (Exps. 2–4). In Exps. 3 and 4, several experimental manipulations were made to emphasize either the global or the local structure of the piece and to verify how these manipultions would affect the respective contribution of the models in the ratings. In all experiments, musical tension was only weakly influenced by global harmonic structure. Instead, it mainly seemed to be determined locally, by harmonic cadences. The hierarchic model of Lerdahl and Jackendoff provided the best fit to tension ratings, not because it accounted for global hierarchic effects, but because it captured the local effect of cadences. By reacting to these local structures, tension ratings fit quite well with a hierarchic model, even though the participants were relatively insensitive to the global structure of the pieces. As a main outcome, it is argued that musical events were perceived through a short perceptual window sliding from cadence to cadence along a sequence. Received: 24 March 1997 / Accepted: 10 May 1998     

Time judgments of musical endings: effects of expectancies on the "filled interval effect"

In two experiments, the influence of musical endings on duration judgments was examined. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to compare the duration of paired folk tunes that could vary in their degree of resolution. Results showed that melodies ending on the leading tone interval were underestimated relative to songs ending on the conventional tonic. Experiment 2 further revealed that time estimates were influenced by a melody's preceding temporal accent structure. Melodies ending earlier than expected were judged significantly shorter, particularly when the tune ended on the leading-tone interval. Conversely, tonic endings were judged substantially longer when they appeared to occur "too late" in time. Results are discussed in terms of a contrast model which emphasizes the role of expectancies on duration judgments.     

Time judgments of musical endings: Effects of expectancies on the “filled interval effect”

In two experiments, the influence of musical endings on duration judgments was examined. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to compare the duration of paired folk tunes that could vary in their degree of resolution. Results showed that melodies ending on the leading tone interval were underestimated relative to songs ending on the conventional tonic. Experiment 2 further revealed that time estimates were influenced by a melody’s preceding temporal accent structure. Melodies ending earlier than expected were judged significantly shorter, particularly when the tune ended on the leading-tone interval. Conversely, tonic endings were judged substantially longer when they appeared to occur “too late” in time. Results are discussed in terms of a contrast model which emphasizes the role of expectancies on duration judgments     

Global context effects on musical expectancy

The effects of global harmonic contexts on expectancy formation were studied in a set of three experiments. Eight-chord sequences were presented to subjects. Expectations for the last chord were varied by manipulating the harmonic context created by the first six: in one context, the last chord was part of an authentic cadence (V–I), whereas in the other, it was a fourth harmonic degree following a full cadence (I–IV). Given this change in harmonic function, the last chord was assumed to be more expected in the former context, all the other local parameters being held constant. The effect of global context on expectancy formation was supported by the fact that subjects reported a lower degree of completion for sequences ending on an unexpected chord (Experiment 1), took longer to decide whether the last chord belonged to the sequence when the last chord was unexpected (Experiment 2), and took longer to decide whether the last chord was consonant or dissonant when it was unexpected (Experiment 3). These results are discussed with reference to current models of tonal cognition.     

Influence of Global Structure on Musical Target Detection and Recognition

The present study adapted a paradigm used in visual perception by Biederman, Glass, and Stacy (1973) and analyzed the influence of a coherent global context on the detection and recognition of musical target excerpts. Global coherence was modified by segmenting minuets into chunks of four, two, or one bar. These chunks were either reordered (Experiments 1, 3, 4, 5) or transposed to different keys (Experiment 2). The results indicate that target detection is influenced only by a reorganization on a very local level (i.e. chunks of one bar). Context incoherence did not influence the recognition of the real targets, but rendered the rejection of wrong target excerpts (foils) more difficult. The present findings revealed only a weak effect of global context on target identification and only for extremely modified structures.     

Contextual modulation of N400 amplitude to lexically ambiguous words

Though much is known about the N400 component, an event-related EEG potential that is sensitive to semantic manipulations, it is unclear whether modulations of N400 amplitude reflect automatic processing, controlled processing, or both. We examined this issue using a semantic judgment task that manipulated local and global contextual cues. Word triplets (prime-noun-target, e.g., finance-bank-money) were sequentially presented on a computer screen (500 ms duration, 1000 ms stimulus onset asynchrony), in which the second word was a homograph. The first word (prime) created a neutral-, dominant-meaning- or subordinate-meaning-biased "global context," and the third word (target) created a dominant- or subordinate-biased "local context" that was either congruent or incongruent with the "global context" established by the first prime word. Participants were instructed to read all three words but to decide only whether the second and third words were semantically related. Event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically the N400, were recorded to the third terminal word. N400 amplitudes evoked by dominant meaning-related third words incongruent with the globally biased subordinate context (e.g., river-bridge-money) were significantly more negative than dominant endings in neutral contexts (e.g., taxi-bank-money), but not different from unrelated filler triplets. In addition, there was some indication that left hemisphere, temporal-parietal electrode sites were associated with greater N400 negativity for dominant targets in conflicting subordinate global contexts than homologous right hemisphere electrode sites, the latter of which showed significant activation to subordinate meanings in cooperating contexts. Thus, N400 amplitude was more affected by global than local context suggesting that controlled processes may take priority over automatic processes in modulating N400 amplitude, especially for left hemisphere electrode sites.     

Speech Planning at Turn Transitions in Dialog Is Associated With Increased Processing Load

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects. The confederate’s utterances (to which participants responded) were pre‐recorded and varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this ending was predictable or not. We found that response planning in overlap with sentence‐final verbs evokes larger task‐evoked pupillary responses, while end predictability had no effect. This finding indicates that planning in overlap leads to higher processing load for next speakers in dialog and that next speakers do not proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn‐taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load.     

Effects of cadence on the acquisition and expression of podokinetic after-rotation

Podokinetic after-rotation (PKAR) occurs as blindfolded subjects inadvertently rotate when asked to step in-place following stepping in-place on a rotating surface. We examined the effects of using different cadences on PKAR to test the following hypothesis: the position signal indicating the amount of rotation between the trunk and the feet during each stance period of treadmill stimulation is used to determine the amount of rotation between the trunk and the feet that is expressed during each stance period of PKAR. Based on this hypothesis, we predicted that use of different cadences during treadmill stimulation would alter PKAR velocity because use of different cadences alters stance duration, thus changing the amount of limb rotation under the trunk during each stance phase of stimulation. We also predicted that use of different cadences during PKAR would alter PKAR velocity because the more steps that are taken in a given time the higher the velocity of PKAR given that the same rotation between trunk and feet occurs during each stance period. Use of different cadences during treadmill stimulation did not alter PKAR velocity, suggesting that PKAR velocity is not determined based upon a position signal regarding the relative rotation between the trunk and feet during stimulation. Use of different cadences during PKAR resulted in lower and higher velocities, respectively, than using a medium cadence. Based on these results, we now hypothesize that the PK system likely uses a velocity or acceleration signal present during stimulation to recalibrate the amount of relative rotation between the trunk and limbs that is expressed with each step during PKAR.     

Rhythm and "good endings": effects of temporal structure on tonality judgments

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the influence of rhythmic structure on the perception of tonal relationships marking the end of a melody. Musically sophisticated listeners were asked to rate the degree of resolution in a set of folk tunes that varied in their tonal ending and temporal accent structure. The results indicated that melodies ending on the leading tone-to-tonic progression were judged the most complete, while the least complete were those leaving a listener "hanging" by ending on the leading tone note. These ratings, however, were influenced by the temporal accent structure of a tune. The highest degree of resolution was observed for melodies that ended "on time" through an invariant pattern of temporal/melodic accents. Accent structures that led to endings occurring earlier or later than expected resulted in significantly lower resolution ratings. The present results illustrate the need to incorporate dynamic pattern influences into models of tonal perception.     

Emotional language processing: how mood affects integration processes during discourse comprehension

This research tests whether mood affects semantic processing during discourse comprehension by facilitating integration of information congruent with moods’ valence. Participants in happy, sad, or neutral moods listened to stories with positive or negative endings during EEG recording. N400 peak amplitudes showed mood congruence for happy and sad participants: endings incongruent with participants’ moods demonstrated larger peaks. Happy and neutral moods exhibited larger peaks for negative endings, thus showing a similarity between negativity bias (neutral mood) and mood congruence (happy mood). Mood congruence resulted in differential processing of negative information: happy mood showed larger amplitudes for negative endings than neutral mood, and sad mood showed smaller amplitudes. N400 peaks were also sensitive to whether ending valence was communicated directly or as a result of inference. This effect was moderately modulated by mood. In conclusion, the notion of context for discourse processing should include comprehenders’ affective states preceding language processing.     

A comparison of sentence- and discourse-level semantic processing: an ERP study

Eighteen subjects listened to sentences ending with semantically congruent or incongruent words. Each congruent sentence was embedded at the end of a short story so that the final word was semantically acceptable at the sentence level but incongruent in terms of discourse context. The same stories were also presented with congruent endings. Auditory ERPs elicited by the final words in these sentences and stories were compared. Both sentence- and discourse-level semantic integration were associated with N400 and Late Positive Component (LPC) effects in addition to a new component, P550. Local and global semantic processing, although evoking the same components, were characterized by differential effects on ERP amplitudes according to the amount of text integrated and its congruence. These results indicate similar cognitive processes of context build up, underlying sentence- and discourse-semantic processing.     

Rhythm and “good endings”: Effects of temporal structure on tonality judgments

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the influence of rhythmic structure on the perception of tonal relationships marking the end of a melody. Musically sophisticated listeners were asked to rate the degree of resolution in a set of folk tunes that varied in their tonal ending and temporal accent structure. The results indicated that melodies ending on the leading tone-to-tonic progression were judged the most complete, while the least complete were those leaving a listener “hanging” by ending on the leading tone note. These ratings, however, were influenced by the temporal accent structure of a tune. The highest degree of resolution was observed for melodies that ended “on time” through an invariant pattern of temporal/melodic accents. Accent structures that led to endings occurring earlier or later than expected resulted in significantly lower resolution ratings. The present results illustrate the need to incorporate dynamic pattern influences into models of tonal perception.     

Some structural determinants of melody recall

Sophisticated musicians were asked to recall, using musical notation, a set of unfamiliar folk tunes that varied in rhythmic structure and referents of tonality. The results showed that memory was facilitated by tonic triad members marking phrase endings, but only when their presence was highlighted by a corresponding pattern of temporal accents. Conversely, recall significantly declined when tonal information was either absent or obscured by rhythmic structure. Error analyses further revealed that the retention of overall pitch contour and information at phrase ending points varied as a function of these manipulations. The results are discussed in terms of a framework that links the acts of perceiving and remembering to a common attentional scheme.     

Eye fixations are influenced by the distribution of information within words

Reader's eye movements were monitored while they inspected isolated words in preparation for a synonym judgement task. The 10-letter words appeared on a screen near the point of fixation, with the first fixation being imposed near the beginning, or the centre, or the ending of the word. The words themselves had uneven distributions of information, in that the beginnings or the endings contained common sequences of letters in English. Three types of words were used: those with very redundant endings (e.g., yearningly), with moderately redundant endings (e.g., varnishing), and with moderately redundant beginnings (e.g., contravene). Redundancy was defined in terms of the total number of words in English which possess that particular sequence of five letters as the beginning or the ending. The experiments asked whether the convenient viewing location within a word varied according to the distribution of information, and whether the extent of redundancy in a word ending is reflected in the distribution of visual attention given to the word. The results were analysed separately for those cases where the reader made just two fixations upon the word before moving to the synonym task, and for those cases where the reader made exactly three fixations. These were the dominant fixation patterns. Evidence for the notion of a convenient viewing position consisted of long first fixations (when there were just two fixations), when this fixation was near the centre of the word. The distribution of information within the words did not influence the duration of the first fixation, although the duration of the gaze within each half-word did increase when more informative letter sequences were being inspected. The extent of redundancy was also seen to influence the inspection patterns, when a comparison was made between the two types of words with redundant endings. Words with very redundant endings received fewer fixations when the first fixation was at the beginning, and for words gaining exactly two fixations, the second fixation was shorter if the word had a very redundant ending.     

Don't Tease Me: Effects of Ending Type on Horror Film Enjoyment

This experimental study explores the influence of horror film ending type on audience enjoyment. Four horror films were manipulated to create versions with traditional endings (endings in which the evil/antagonist is destroyed) or teaser endings (endings in which the evil/antagonist revives). Analysis explored differences in the preferences for ending type based on watcher motivations. Results suggest that viewers, particularly viewers highly motivated by gore or thrill factors, rated traditional endings more favorably than teaser endings, although seemingly for different reasons.     

Further investigation of harmonic priming in long contexts using musical timbre as surface marker to control for temporal effects

Harmonic priming studies have reported facilitated processing for chords that are harmonically related to the prime context. Responses to the target (the last chord of an 8-chord sequence) were faster and more accurate when the target was strongly related, i.e., a tonic chord, to the preceding prime context than when it was less related, i.e., a subdominant chord. Results have been interpreted in terms of musical expectations and processing speed: the prime allows listeners to develop expectations for future events which lead to facilitated processing of the most strongly expected event. The present experiment investigated an alternative hypothesis suggesting that the harmonic structure of the prime context might create an ambiguity about "when" to respond that is stronger in contexts ending on less related targets than in contexts ending on strongly related targets. A change of musical timbre was used as surface marker indicating without ambiguity the temporal occurrence of the target. Participants made speeded intonation judgments of the target, i.e., judging whether targets are acoustically consonant or dissonant. The findings replicate the previously reported priming effect and rule out that processing differences are solely due to ambiguities about when in time the target will occur.     

Shared structural and temporal integration resources for music and arithmetic processing

While previous research has investigated the relationship either between language and music processing or between language and arithmetic processing, the present study investigated the relationship between music and arithmetic processing. Rule-governed number series, with the final number being a correct or incorrect series ending, were visually presented in synchrony with musical sequences, with the final chord functioning as the expected tonic or the less-expected subdominant chord (i.e., tonal function manipulation). Participants were asked to judge the correctness of the final number as quickly and accurately as possible. The results revealed an interaction between the processing of series ending and the processing of the task-irrelevant chords' tonal function, thus suggesting that music and arithmetic processing share cognitive resources. These findings are discussed in terms of general temporal and structural integration resources for linguistic and non-linguistic rule-governed sequences.     

Singing in the Brain: Independence of Lyrics and Tunes

Why is vocal music the oldest and still the most popular form of music? Very possibly because vocal music involves an intimate combination of speech and music, two of the most specific, high-level skills of human beings. The issue we address is whether people listening to a song treat the linguistic and musical components separately or integrate them within a single percept. Event-related potentials were recorded while musicians listened to excerpts from operas sung a capella. Excerpts were ended by semantically congruous or incongruous words sung either in or out of key. Results clearly demonstrated the independence of lyrics and tunes, so that an additive model of semantic- and harmonic-violations processing predicted the data extremely well. These results are consistent with a modular organization of the human cognitive system and open new perspectives in the search for the similarities and differences between language and music processing.     

Outwitting the rational mind: How effortful thinking influences price cognition

Prior research presents mixed findings on how people's degrees of effortful thinking influence their reliance on heuristics and biases. Although the tenets of dual process theory would argue that effortful thinking should attenuate people's reliance on heuristics, a number of contemporary findings suggest otherwise: Effortful thinking may, in fact, enhance biased processing of information in certain instances. This research shows how, in the context of pricing, people's degrees of effortful thinking can amplify their inclination towards biased processing of price information. In five studies (n = 1,339), we find that effortful thinking induces a greater preference for nine‐ending (vs. zero‐ending) prices, and the effect is mainly driven by people's greater propensity for argument‐based decision making. Such predilection to nine‐endings attenuates with lower cognitive effort in processing price information. Moreover, when locus of deliberation shifts from price to quality, consumers' preference for nine‐ending priced options is subdued.     

End effects of rated life quality: the James Dean Effect

In three studies, we explored how the ending of a life influences the perceived desirability of that life. We consistently observed that participants neglected duration in judging the global quality of life. Across all the studies, the end of life was weighted heavily, producing ratings that contradict a simple hedonic calculus in which years of pleasure and pain are summed. Respondents rated a wonderful life that ended abruptly as better than one with additional mildly pleasant years (the 'James Dean Effect'). Similarly, a terrible life with additional moderately bad years was rated as more desirable than one ending abruptly without those unpleasant years (the 'Alexander Solzhenitsyn Effect'). Finally, embedding moderately intense years in the middle of life did not produce effects as strong as adding those years to the end of life, suggesting that a life's ending is weighted especially heavily in judging quality of life.