Intonation discrimination for tonal chord sequences in a priming paradigm:Effects of target predictability and musical expertise. Issue 1 (3rd April 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sears, David R. W.; Verbeten, Jonathan; Percival, Hannah M.
• Is Part Of: Auditory perception & cognition. Volume 4:Issue 1/2(2021)
• Page Start: 33
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2021-04-03
• Subjects: Tonal priming -- harmonic expectations -- pitch intonation -- adaptive testing; Auditory perception -- Periodicals; Cognition -- Periodicals; Auditory perception; Cognition; Electronic journals; Periodicals; 152.16
• DOI: 10.1080/25742442.2021.1972744
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2574-2442

Abstract

ABSTRACT: To examine priming effects for tonal chord sequences using behavioral methods, experimenters typically employ a discrimination task that draws the participants' attention to features of the stimulus other than those being assessed, but that may still be affected by the expectedness of the target event. And yet, despite an extensive body of evidence demonstrating tonal priming effects using several discrimination tasks, the relationships between task difficulty, musical expertise, and the expectedness of the target event are not well understood. Thus, this study predicts intonation discrimination performance for tonal chord sequences using measures related to the predictability of the terminal, target chord and the musical sophistication of the participant sample. One hundred participants (50 musicians) were presented with tonal chord sequences and asked to respond to a one-alternative forced choice (1AFC) intonation discrimination task, where out-of-tune targets were mistuned in a range from 1–100 cents sharp using a parametric adaptive staircasing procedure. Chord predictability was estimated using a probabilistic finite-context model, and musical sophistication was measured using the Goldsmith Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI). As expected, discrimination thresholds varied substantially across the participant sample and were strongly negatively correlated with the Gold-MSI. What is more, moderation analyses revealed a significant interaction between intonation size and predictability, suggesting participants conflate chord intonation with unexpectedness when tuning differences are small.