What do listeners understand by “continuity” and “closure”? Tracking down the links between tonal expectancy, music training, and conceptualization

Abstract

In two studies, the following hypothesis was tested: music training promotes the formation of two conceptually driven schemas of tonal expectancy, continuation, or the expectation that a melody will move to a (relatively) unstable tone, and closure, or the expectation that a melody will move to a (relatively) stable tone. Specifically, musicians and nonmusicians were asked to rate how well various melodic fragments either “continued” or “ended” with a set of probe tones (Study 1), or to do this but with the caveat that “continuation” meant “not ending/completion,” and vice versa (Study 2). When judging completion, both groups of listeners showed expectations for the most stable tones of the key, that is, those of the tonic chord. When judging continuation, the same was the case in nonmusicians, indicating that in untrained listeners tonal cognition is partially nonconceptual—that is, that categorization of stable tones is not systematic. Instead, musicians showed expectations for a subset of relatively unstable tones, those of the dominant chord (Study 1), especially when discriminating between “continuations” and “completions” (Study 2). These findings support the hypothesis that there is a link between tonal expectancy, music training, and conceptualization, and provide novel information regarding how tonal concepts are hierarchically interrelated.