Abstract
We report on a study conducted to extend our knowledge about the process of gaining a mental representation of music. Several studies, inspired by research on the statistical learning of language, have investigated statistical learning of sequential rules underlying tone sequences. Given that the mental representation of music correlates with distributional properties of music, we tested whether participants are able to abstract distributional information contained in tone sequences to form a mental representation. For this purpose, we created an unfamiliar music genre defined by an underlying tone distribution, to which 40 participants were exposed. Our stimuli allowed us to differentiate between sensitivity to the distributional properties contained in test stimuli and long term representation of the distributional properties of the music genre overall. Using a probe tone paradigm and a two-alternative forced choice discrimination task, we show that listeners are able to abstract distributional properties of music through mere exposure into a long term representation of music. This lends support to the idea that statistical learning is involved in the process of gaining musical knowledge.
Highlights
Music is ubiquitous in our everyday life
Based on our sense of a specific music genre, we are even able to identify points at which stylistic mistakes are made, e.g., when the music sounds unconventional or ‘‘weird.’’ How do we gain this sense of music? How do we gain a mental representation of a music genre?
The third mixed-effects model analyzing probe tone ratings obtained for probe tones, which did not occur in probe tone contexts, revealed that all fixed effects were significant predictors: Time, t (156) = 4.74, p < .001, Exposure, t (156) = 4.53, p < .001, as well as their interaction, t (156) = 2.65, p =
Summary
Music is ubiquitous in our everyday life. do we actively seek out music, we encounter it passively, for instance playing softly in grocery stores. Perceiving music involves a diverse range of cognitive processes. These processes give rise to our abilities to recall our favourite songs, appreciate new music, and recognize different music genres. Our sense of music involves a tacit knowledge of which scale degrees are more important than others in a specific music genre (Krumhansl & Cuddy, 2010). This knowledge has been called our representation of tonal hierarchy, i.e., our mental representation of the rank order of musical tones by stability. Assessing the mental representation of tonal hierarchy may be considered a proxy for the assessment of the representation of a music genre.
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