Abstract
Numerous past studies have investigated neurophysiological correlates of music-syntactic processing. However, only little is known about how prior knowledge about an upcoming syntactically irregular event modulates brain correlates of music-syntactic processing. Two versions of a short chord sequence were presented repeatedly to non-musicians (n = 20) and musicians (n = 20). One sequence version ended on a syntactically regular chord, and the other one ended on a syntactically irregular chord. Participants were either informed (cued condition), or not informed (non-cued condition) about whether the sequence would end on the regular or the irregular chord. Results indicate that in the cued condition (compared to the non-cued condition) the peak latency of the early right anterior negativity (ERAN), elicited by irregular chords, was earlier in both non-musicians and musicians. However, the expectations due to the knowledge about the upcoming event (veridical expectations) did not influence the amplitude of the ERAN. These results suggest that veridical expectations modulate only the speed, but not the principle mechanisms, of music-syntactic processing.
Highlights
For harmonically related chords and veridical expectations for unrelated chords were induced by various situations[6]
It was found that even when unexpected chord pairs occurred more often or when they were preceded immediately by the target pair, schematically expected chords were processed faster. This indicates that the influence of schematic expectations is stronger than the influence of veridical expectations on chord processing. This is consistent with results of a study by Tillmann and Bigand who tested how far schematic expectations can be influenced by veridical expectations[7]
Trials in which auditory-auditory regularity and visual-auditory regularity predicted the same sound elicited an IRMMN. These results provide evidence that auditory sensory predictions based on stimulus-driven extraction of auditory-auditory regularities and auditory sensory predictions based on knowledge-driven extraction of attended visual-auditory regularities operate in a highly functionally modular fashion
Summary
For harmonically related chords and veridical expectations for unrelated chords were induced by various situations[6]. We investigated whether or not veridical expectations (due to veridical knowledge) would impact on music-syntactic processing (driven by schematic or style-specific syntactic knowledge) by directly comparing a condition in which predictions can be made with a condition in which no predictions can be made. To investigate this issue, chord sequences in which the final chord was syntactically either regular or irregular were used. Error bars indicate standard error of mean (SEM). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
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