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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments
Published on: March 1, 2022
Similarity and repetition: an ERP study on musical form perception
Christiane Neuhaus1, Thomas R Knösche, Angela D Friederici
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. neuhaus@cbs.mpg.de
Abstract:
In this ERP study we investigate how consecutive phrase patterns in the musical form types AABB and ABAB are conjoined perceptually. An anterior N300 reflects recognition of motif similarity in adjacent (A-A) and nonadjacent (A-B-A) phrase patterns, indicating perceptual coherence between (similar) parts in linear order. A marginally significant late anterior negativity reflects the processing of the second B in ABAB. It probably reveals some global aspects of "structural integration" when nonadjacent parts are perceived in the context of the whole melody.
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