Abstract
Musical imagery is a relatively unexplored area, partly because of deficiencies in existing experimental paradigms, which are often difficult, unreliable, or do not provide objective measures of performance. Here we describe a novel protocol, the Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT), which induces and trains pitch imagery in both musicians and non-musicians. Given a tonal context and an initial pitch sequence, arrows are displayed to elicit a scale-step sequence of imagined pitches, and participants indicate whether the final imagined tone matches an audible probe. It is a staircase design that accommodates individual differences in musical experience and imagery ability. This new protocol was used to investigate the roles that musical expertise, self-reported auditory vividness and mental control play in imagery performance. Performance on the task was significantly better for participants who employed a musical imagery strategy compared to participants who used an alternative cognitive strategy and positively correlated with scores on the Control subscale from the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS). Multiple regression analysis revealed that Imagery performance accuracy was best predicted by a combination of strategy use and scores on the Vividness subscale of BAIS. These results confirm that competent performance on the PIAT requires active musical imagery and is very difficult to achieve using alternative cognitive strategies. Auditory vividness and mental control were more important than musical experience in the ability to perform manipulation of pitch imagery.
Highlights
IntroductionMusical imagery can be described as “hearing a tune in your head” [1]
The present results confirm the effectiveness of the Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT) for inducing musical imagery, and provide insights into the roles that musical training, auditory vividness and mental control play in successful imagery performance
The other participant who self-reported having absolute pitch (AP), reported using pitch imagery. This participant was within one standard deviation of the mean for Musical Experience Index (MEI), Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS)-V and BAIS-C among musical imagery strategy users, and her exclusion from the analyses did not significantly alter any of the findings
Summary
Musical imagery can be described as “hearing a tune in your head” [1]. It is a common, everyday experience even for those with no musical training. Despite the ubiquity of musical imagery, research on the topic has often examined musicians and non-musicians separately. This is largely because of deficiencies in existing experimental protocols for inducing and measuring musical imagery. Imagery tasks are too difficult for non-musicians to complete [2]; in other cases, they are too easy for musicians and susceptible to ceiling effects for this
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