Tracking familiarity, recognition, and liking increases with repeated exposures to Nontonal Music: Revisiting MEE-Revisited

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated mere exposure effects (MEE) with musical tunes (e.g., Halpern & Müllensiefen, 2008; Peretz et al., 1998). Our goal was to investigate the effects of repeated exposures on processing fluency, recognition performance, and liking ratings for unfamiliar tonal and nontonal tunes, with type of tune being manipulated between-participants. Tunes were presented either 1, 3 or 6 times and processed either with a familiarity rating or counting long notes orienting task. We found that participants' familiarity ratings increased across repeated exposures for both types of tunes. Likewise, recognition performance for both unfamiliar and nontonal tunes improved with repeated exposures. The increase in recognition sensitivity for nontonal tunes was steady across six repetitions whereas for unfamiliar tonal tunes the increase decelerated after three repetitions. Liking ratings, too, increased with repeated exposures for both types of tunes and in comparable ways. Liking ratings were also higher for hits than misses and correlated positively with recognition confidence ratings. Orienting tasks did not have an effect on liking or recognition. Findings are discussed with reference to the processing fluency account (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004), dual process account (Mandler, 1980) and the fluency misattribution model (Bornstein & D'Agostino, 1992).