Flexibility of temporal order in musical and linguistic recognition

In Experiments 1-3 participants heard pairs of audio clips, each corresponding to half of a phrase (linguistic or musical), in a forward direction or a backward direction, where the second half came first. They judged whether the second clip was from a familiar source or from the same source as the first clip. In both tasks participants were faster and more accurate when the clips were from the same source and faster with linguistic stimuli. Longer temporal distances impaired performance, although greater flexibility was shown with linguistic materials. In Experiment 4, single extended clips were played in temporal or scrambled order. Judgments of familiarity were slower with scrambled song melodies than with instrumental melodies, and processing of music was disrupted more than that of language when temporal order was violated. These results suggest that semantic meaning enhances processing of temporal order information and modulates access.