Familiarity-Frequency Ratings of Melodic Intervals

Abstract

Experimental psychologists working in verbal learning have investigated meaningfulness as it relates to the association properties of nonsense syllables and words. Meaningfulness (M) is defined in terms of the number of associations that any given nonsense syllable or word is likely to elicit from an individual. For example, subjects presented with a nonsense syllable such as gex might be asked to report all the word or thought associations elicited by this verbal unit. A tally of responses then would yield an M value for the syllable as determined by the number or percentage of responses. Units usually are ranked according to the magnitude of their M values, which Archer has shown to remain fairly constant from one investigation to another.1 Research studies also have given strong evidence that M values for verbal units are related closely to the rate at which these units are learned under experimental conditions. Also closely related to meaningfulness are the frequency of verbal units' appearance in English and the degree of individuals' familiarity with them. Rating scales have been used to test degrees of familiarity of verbal units; subjects respond directly: the more familiar an item is, the higher subjects rate it. Underwood and Schultz point out that frequency ratings of verbal units given by subjects in many studies have correlated very highly with the number of associations elicited by these units. Furthermore, subjects can judge quite accurately the frequency with which words and letters appear in English.2 1James E. Archer, Re-evaluation of Meaningfulness of All Possible CVC Trigrams, Psychological Monographs, Vol. 74 (1960). 2 Benton J. Underwood and Rudolph W. Schulz, Meaningfulness and Verbal Learning (New York: Lippincott, 1960), pp. 51-52.