Octave generalization and the consolidation of melodic information.

Abstract

Subjects listened to a standard six-tone melody, followed by a comparison melody. The comparison melody was always transposed up four semitones from the standard, and this transposition was either exact or it was inexact while maintaining contour. Subjects judged whether or not the comparison melody formed an exact transposition of the standard. It was found that repetition of the standard melody, before presentation of the comparison, resulted in a significant improvement in performance compared with a condition featuring only a single presentation of the standard. A significant improvement also resulted when the repeated melody was displaced intact an octave higher or an octave lower. However, when the standard melody was repeated such that its components were displaced alternately to the higher and lower octaves, performance was significantly worse than when the standard melody was not repeated at all. Thus, in this paradigm, octave equivalence effects for single tones did not operate in the consolidation of melodic information.