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Remembering the melody and timbre, forgetting the key and tempo
E Glenn Schellenberg1, Peter Habashi2
1Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, L5L 1C6. g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca.
Memory & Cognition
|March 25, 2015
Summary
Listeners can remember melodies even after a week, but changes in key, tempo, or timbre can affect recall. Memory for key and tempo fades faster than timbre memory.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Music Perception
- Auditory Memory
Background:
- Melody identity is generally considered independent of surface acoustic features.
- Understanding how listeners retain melody information over time is crucial for cognitive science.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the duration of memory for unfamiliar melodies.
- To determine if changes in key, tempo, or timbre affect melody recognition over time.
Main Methods:
- Participants listened to unfamiliar melodies twice, followed by recognition tests after 10 minutes, 1 day, or 1 week.
- Melodies were altered in key, tempo, or timbre between initial exposure and testing.
Main Results:
- Listeners demonstrated robust melody recognition, with no significant forgetting over a week.
- Changes in key or tempo impaired recognition at shorter delays (10 min, 1 day) but not after 1 week.
- Timbre changes negatively impacted recognition across all delay intervals.
Conclusions:
- Mental representations of unfamiliar melodies consolidate rapidly, within two presentations.
- Melody representations retain surface-level information (key, tempo, timbre) beyond the core identity.
- Information regarding key and tempo is less stable in memory compared to timbre.
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