Infants’ perception of musical patterns

This paper examines infants’ ability to perceive various aspects of musical material that are significant in music in general and in Western European music in particular: contour, intervals, exact pitches, diatonic structure, and rhythm. For the most part, infants focus on relational aspects of melodies, synthesizing global representations from local details. They encode the contour of a melody across variations in exact pitches and intervals. They extract information about pitch direction from the smallest musically relevant pitch change in Western music, the semitone. Under certain conditions, infants detect interval changes in the context of transposed sequences, their performance showing enhancement for sequences that conform to Western musical structure. Infants have difficulty retaining exact pitches except for sets of pitches that embody important musical relations. In the temporal domain, they group the elements of auditory sequences on the basis of similarity and they extract the temporal structure of a melody across variations in tempo.     

Cross-cultural perspectives on pitch memory

We examined effects of age and culture on children's memory for the pitch level of familiar music. Canadian 9- and 10-year-olds distinguished the original pitch level of familiar television theme songs from foils that were pitch-shifted by one semitone, whereas 5- to 8-year-olds failed to do so (Experiment 1). In contrast, Japanese 5- and 6-year-olds distinguished the pitch-shifted foils from the originals, performing significantly better than same-age Canadian children (Experiment 2). Moreover, Japanese 6-year-olds were more accurate than their 5-year-old counterparts. These findings challenge the prevailing view of enhanced pitch memory during early life. We consider factors that may account for Japanese children's superior performance such as their use of a pitch accent language (Japanese) rather than a stress accent language (English) and their experience with musical pitch labels.     

A study of perceptual development for musical tuning

Musical tuning perception in infancy and adulthood was explored in three experiments. In Experiment 1, Western adults were tested in detection of randomly located mistunings in a melody based on musical interval patterns from native and nonnative musical scales. Subjects performed better in a Western major scale context than in either a Western augmented or--a Javanese pelog scale context. Because the major scale is used frequently in Western music and, therefore, is more perceptually familiar than either the augmented scale or the pelog scale are, the adults’ pattern of performance is suggestive of musical acculturation. Experiments 2 and3 were designed to explore the onset of culturally specific perceptual reorganization for music in the age period that has been found to be important in linguistically specific perceptual reorganization for speech. In Experiment 2, 1-year-olds had a pattern of performance similar to that of the adults, but 6-month-olds could not detect mistunings reliably better than chance. In Experiment 3, another group of 6-month-olds was tested, and a larger degree of mistuning was used so that floor effects might be avoided. These 6-month-olds performed better in the major and augmented scale contexts than in the pelog context, without a reliable performance difference between the major and augmented contexts. Comparison of the results obtained with 6-month-olds and 1-year-olds suggests that culturally specific perceptual reorganization for musical tuning begins to affect perception between these ages, but the 6-month-olds’ pattern of results considered alone is not as clear. The 6-month-olds’ better performance on the major and augmented interval patterns than on the pelog interval pattern is potentially attributable to either the 6-month.olds’ lesser perceptual acculturation than that of the 1-year-olds or perhaps to an innate predisposition for processing of music based on a single fundamental interval, in this case the semitone.     

A study of perceptual development for musical tuning.

Musical tuning perception in infancy and adulthood was explored in three experiments. In Experiment 1, Western adults were tested in detection of randomly located mistunings in a melody based on musical interval patterns from native and nonnative musical scales. Subjects performed better in a Western major scale context than in either a Western augmented or a Javanese pelog scale context. Because the major scale is used frequently in Western music and, therefore, is more perceptually familiar than either the augmented scale or the pelog scale are, the adults' pattern of performance is suggestive of musical acculturation. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to explore the onset of culturally specific perceptual reorganization for music in the age period that has been found to be important in linguistically specific perceptual reorganization for speech. In Experiment 2, 1-year-olds had a pattern of performance similar to that of the adults, but 6-month-olds could not detect mistunings reliably better than chance. In Experiment 3, another group of 6-month-olds was tested, and a larger degree of mistuning was used so that floor effects might be avoided. These 6-month-olds performed better in the major and augmented scale contexts than in the pelog context, without a reliable performance difference between the major and augmented contexts. Comparison of the results obtained with 6-month-olds and 1-year-olds suggests that culturally specific perceptual reorganization for musical tuning begins to affect perception between these ages, but the 6-month-olds' pattern of results considered alone is not as clear. The 6-month-olds' better performance on the major and augmented interval patterns than on the pelog interval pattern is potentially attributable to either the 6-month-olds' lesser perceptual acculturation than that of the 1-year-olds or perhaps to an innate predisposition for processing of music based on a single fundamental interval, in this case the semitone.     

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.     

Enculturation to musical pitch structure in young children: evidence from behavioral and electrophysiological methods

Children learn the structure of the music of their culture similarly to how they learn the language to which they are exposed in their daily environment. Furthermore, as with language, children acquire this musical knowledge without formal instruction. Two critical aspects of musical pitch structure in Western tonal music are key membership (understanding which notes belong in a key and which do not) and harmony (understanding which notes combine to form chords and which notes and chords tend to follow others). The early developmental trajectory of the acquisition of this knowledge remains unclear, in part because of the difficulty of testing young children. In two experiments, we investigated 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds' enculturation to Western musical pitch using a novel age‐appropriate and engaging behavioral task (Experiment 1) and electroencephalography (EEG; Experiment 2). In Experiment 1 we found behavioral evidence that 5‐year‐olds were sensitive to key membership but not to harmony, and no evidence that 4‐year‐olds were sensitive to either. However, in Experiment 2 we found neurophysiological evidence that 4‐year‐olds were sensitive to both key membership and harmony. Our results suggest that musical enculturation has a long developmental trajectory, and that children may have some knowledge of key membership and harmony before that knowledge can be expressed through explicit behavioral judgments.     

A comparison of infants' and adults' sensitivity to western musical structure.

Adults (n = 28) and 8-month-old infants (n = 48) listened to repeated transpositions of a 10-note melody exemplifying the rules of Western tonal music. They were tested for their detection of two types of changes to that melody: (a) a 4-semitone change in 1 note that remained within the key and implied dominant harmony (diatonic change) or (b) a 1-semitone change in the same note that went outside the key (nondiatonic change). Adults easily detected the nondiatonic change but had difficulty with the diatonic change. Infants detected both changes equally well, performing better than adults in some circumstances. These findings imply that there are qualitative differences in infants' and adults' processing of musical information.     

Effects of uncertainty on melodic information processing

In three experiments, musically trained and untrained adults listened to three repetitions of a 5-note melodic sequence followed by a final melody with either the same tune as those preceding it or differing in one position by one semitone. In Experiment 1, ability to recognize the final sequence was examined as a function of redundancy at the levels of musical structure in a sequence, contour complexity of transpositions in a trial, and trial context in a session. Within a sequence, tones were related as the major or augmented triad; within a trial, the four sequences began on successively higher notes (simple macrocontour) or on randomly selected notes (complex macrocontour); and within a session, trials were either blocked (all major or all augmented) or mixed (major and augmented randomly selected). Performance was superior for major melodies, for systematic transpositions within a trial (simple macrocontours), for blocked trials, and for musically trained listeners. In Experiment 2, we examined further the effect of macrocontour. Performance on simple macrocontours exceeded that on complex, and excluded the possibility that repetition of the 20-note sequences provided the entire benefit of systematic transposition in Experiment 1. The effect of musical structure (major/augmented) was also replicated. In Experiment 3, listeners provided structure ratings of ascending 20-note sequences from Experiment 2. Ratings on same trials were higher than those on corresponding different trials, in contrast to performance scores for augmented same and different trials in previous experiments. The concept of functional uncertainty was proposed to account for recognition difficulties on augmented same trials. The significant effects of redundancy on all the levels examined confirm the utility of the information-processing framework for the study of melodic sequence perception.     

Effects of uncertainty on melodic

In three experiments, musically trained and untrained adults listened to three repetitions of a 5-note melodic sequence followed by a final melody with either the same tune as those preceding it or differing in one position by one semitone. In Experiment 1, ability to recognize the final sequence was examined as a function of redundancy at the levels of musical structurein a sequence, contour complexity of transpositions in a trial, and trial context in a session. Within a sequence, tones were related as the major or augmented triad; within a trial, the four sequences began on successively higher notes (simple macrocontour) or on randomly selected notes (complex macrocontour); and within a session, trials were either blocked (all major or all augmented) or mixed (major and augmented randomly selected). Performance was superior for major melodies, for systematic transpositions within a trial (simple macrocontours), for blocked trials, and for musically trained listeners. In Experiment 2, we examined further the effect of macrocontour. Performance on simple macrocontours exceeded that on complex, and excluded the possibility that repetition of the 20-note sequences provided the entire benefit of systematic transposition in Experiment 1. The effect of musical structure (major/augmented) was also replicated. In Experiment 3, listeners provided structure ratings of ascending 20-note sequences fromExperiment 2. Ratings onsame trials were higher than those on correspondingdifferent trials, in contrast to performance scores for augmentedsame anddifferent trials in previous experiments. The concept of functional uncertainty was proposed to account for recognition difficulties on augmented same trials. The significant effects of redundancy on all the levels examined confirm the utility of the information-processing framework for thestudy of melodic sequence perception.     

Transfer of associative grouping to novel perceptual contexts in infancy

Learning can be highly adaptive if associations learned in one context are generalized to novel contexts. We examined the development of such generalization in infancy in the context of grouping. In Experiment 1, 3- to 4-month-olds and 6- to 7-month-olds were habituated to shapes grouped via the organizational principle of common region and were tested with familiar and novel pairs as determined by the principle of proximity. Older infants generalized from common region to proximity, but younger infants did not. Younger infants failed to generalize when the task was easier (Experiment 2), and their failure was not due to inability to group via proximity (Experiment 3). However, in Experiment 4, even younger infants generalized grouping on the basis of connectedness to proximity. Thus, the ability to transfer learned associations of shapes to novel contexts is evident early in life, although it continues to undergo quantitative change during infancy. Moreover, the operation of this generalization mechanism may be induced by means of bootstrapping onto functional organizational principles, which is consistent with a developmental framework in which core processes scaffold learning.     

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.     

Maximum key-profile correlation (MKC) as a measure of tonal structure in music

Tonal structure is musical organization on the basis of pitch, in which pitches vary in importance and rate of occurrence according to their relationship to a tonal center. Experiment 1 evaluated the maximum key-profile correlation (MKC), a product of Krumhansl and Schmuckler’s key-finding algorithm (Krumhansl, 1990), as a measure of tonal structure. The MKC is the maximum correlation coefficient between the pitch class distribution in a musical sample and key profiles,which indicate the stability of pitches with respect to particular tonal centers. The MKC values of melodies correlated strongly with listeners’ ratings of tonal structure. To measure the influence of the temporal order of pitches on perceived tonal structure, three measures (fifth span, semitone span, and pitch contour) taken from previous studies of melody perception were also correlated with tonal structure ratings. None of the temporal measures correlated as strongly or as consistently with tonal structure ratings as did the MKC, and nor did combining them with the MKC improve prediction of tonal structure ratings. In Experiment 2, the MKC did not correlate with recognition memory of melodies. However, melodies with very low MKC values were recognized less accurately than melodies with very high MKC values. Although it does not incorporate temporal, rhythmic, or harmonic factors that may influence perceived tonal structure, the MKC can be interpreted as a measure of tonal structure, at least for brief melodies.     

Infants' memory for musical performances

We evaluated 6- and 7-month-olds' preference and memory for expressive recordings of sung lullabies. In Experiment 1, both age groups preferred lower-pitched to higher-pitched renditions of unfamiliar lullabies. In Experiment 2, infants were tested after 2 weeks of daily exposure to a lullaby at one pitch level. Seven-month-olds listened significantly longer to the lullaby at a novel pitch level than at the original pitch level. Six-month-olds showed no preference but their low-pitch preference was eliminated. We conclude that infants' memory for musical performances is enhanced by the ecological validity of the materials. Moreover, infants' pitch preferences are influenced by their previous exposure and by the nature of the music.     

Responsiveness of Western adults to pitch-distributional information in melodic sequences

Responsiveness of musically trained and untrained adults to pitch-distributional information in melodic contexts was assessed. In Experiment 1, melodic contexts were pure-tone sequences, generated from either a diatonic or one of four nondiatonic tonesets, in which pitch-distributional information was manipulated by variation of the relative frequency of occurrence of tones from the toneset. Both the assignment of relative frequency of occurrence to tones and the construction of the (fixed) temporal order of tones within the sequences contravened the conventions of western tonal music. A probe-tone technique was employed. Each presentation of a sequence was followed by a probe tone, one of the 12 chromatic notes within the octave. Listeners rated the goodness of musical fit of the probe tone to the sequence. Probe-tone ratings were significantly related to frequency of occurrence of the probe tone in the sequence for both trained and untrained listeners. In addition, probe-tone ratings decreased as the pitch distance between the probe tone and the final tone of the sequence increased. For musically trained listeners, probe-tone ratings for diatonic sequences tended also to reflect the influence of an internalized tonal schema. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the temporal location of tones in the sequences could not alone account for the effect of frequency of occurrence in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 tested musically untrained listeners under the conditions of Experiment 1, with the exception that the temporal order of tones in each sequence was randomized across trials. The effect of frequency of occurrence found in Experiment 1 was replicated and strengthened.     

The inability of young children to reproduce intensity differences in musical rhythms

A musical rhythm can be described in terms of both its temporal and its dynamic structure. However, although 6-year-old children are able to perceive and reproduce simple temporal structures, even 8-year-olds rarely reproduce intensity differences. Four experiments on the perception and reproduction of musical rhythms by 5- to 8-year-old children demonstrate that even though dynamic structure is clearly dominated by its temporal support, intensity differences play a role in reinforcing the temporal structure. The inability of children to reproduce intensity differences appears to be due neither to an inability to control the intensity of their tap responses nor to the fact that they cannot perceive such changes in intensity. Rather, the results seem best interpreted in terms of the allocation of attentional resources. With simple stimulus material (Experiments 1-3), the children focused on temporal information, and only when the processing of temporal information was mastered did they have "enough attention left" to direct it to intensity differences (Experiment 2). With more complex orchestral music (Experiment 4), attention was primarily allocated to the dynamic structure.     

Infants' discrimination of happy and sad music

Infants can detect information specifying affect in infant- and adult-directed speech, familiar and unfamiliar facial expressions, and in point-light displays of facial expressions. We examined 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds' discrimination of musical excerpts judged by adults and preschoolers as happy and sad. In Experiment 1, using an infant-controlled habituation procedure, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds heard three musical excerpts that were rated as either happy or sad. Following habituation, infants were presented with two new musical excerpts from the other affect group. Nine-month-olds discriminated the musical excerpts rated as affectively different. Five- and seven-month-olds discriminated the happy and sad excerpts when they were habituated to sad excerpts but not when they were habituated to happy excerpts. Three-month-olds showed no evidence of discriminating the sad and happy excerpts. In Experiment 2, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds were presented with two new musical excerpts from the same affective group as the habituation excerpts. At no age did infants discriminate these novel, yet affectively similar, musical excerpts. In Experiment 3, we examined 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds' discrimination of individual excerpts rated as affectively similar. Only the 9-month-olds discriminated the affectively similar individual excerpts. Results are discussed in terms of infants' ability to discriminate affect across a variety of events and its relevance for later social-communicative development.     

When is a question not answered? The understanding of young children of utterances violating or conforming to the rules of conversational sequencing

Knowledge of the conventional rules of conversational sequencing enables a speaker or listener to evaluate the pragmatic use of an utterance. This study explored young children's ability to discriminate among utterances that violated or conformed to these rules (Experiment 1), and ability to explain rule violations (Experiment 2). In both experiments children were read short episodes containing utterances that conformed to the rules in that the utterances were used appropriately in the episodic context of utterance, or utterances that violated the conversational rules of contingency, relevance, or informativeness. In Experiment 1, kindergarten, and first- and second-grade children (5, 6, and 7 years of age) were asked to discriminate among the conforming and rule violating utterances by assigning each utterance to one of two female conventional and unconventional speakers. The results showed that the first and second graders, but not the kindergarten children, generally discriminated among the utterances. In Experiment 2, first and third graders (6 and 8 years of age) were asked to explain the rule violations. The results showed that only the third graders consistently generated correct explanations. These results suggest that children can use the rules of conversational sequencing to evaluate the need for an inference to the speaker's intent in deliberately violating a rule by 6 or 7 years of age, but do not correctly infer that intent until they are 8 or 9 years old.     

Visual recognition memory across contexts

In two experiments, we investigated the development of representational flexibility in visual recognition memory during infancy using the Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task. In Experiment 1, 6- and 9-month-old infants exhibited recognition when familiarization and test occurred in the same room, but showed no evidence of recognition when familiarization and test occurred in different rooms. In contrast, 12- and 18-month-old infants exhibited recognition irrespective of testing room. Thus, flexibility across a change of room was observed at a younger age than flexibility across a change of background that has previously been seen with the VPC procedure (Robinson & Pascalis, 2004). To determine if limitations in representational flexibility across a change of background could be overcome by experiences during encoding, in Experiment 2, 6-, 9-, 12- and 18-month-old infants were familiarized with a picture on multiple backgrounds. At all ages, infants showed recognition across a change in background at test. These findings indicate that dissociating an item from its context during encoding may be an important factor in understanding the representational flexibility of visual recognition memory in infancy. Developmental changes in representational flexibility are likely driven by changes in the functional maturity of the hippocampal formation, and experience.     

When the alternative would have been better: counterfactual reasoning and the emergence of regret

Counterfactual reasoning about how events could have turned out better is associated with the feeling of regret. However, developmental studies show a discrepancy between the onset of counterfactual reasoning (at 3 years) and the feeling of regret (at 6 years). In four experiments we explored possible reasons. Experiment 1 (3- to 6-year-old children) and Experiment 2 (adult control) show that even when regret is assessed more directly than in previous studies (e.g., Amsel & Smalley, 2000) only adults but not children regret their decision. Experiment 3 (3- to 14-year-old children) suggests that double-questioning--asking children how happy they are with what they got before and after they had seen what they could have got--creates false positive indications of regret in the youngest children and that--when controlling for false positives--regret is not evident before 9 years. However, children before this age make a difference between attractive (three candies) and less attractive (one candy) items (Experiment 4; 6- to 8-year-old children). Taken together, this suggests that before 9 years of age children base their judgements solely on what they got without taking into account what they could have got.