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Expectations for tonal cadences: Sensory and cognitive priming effects
David Rw Sears1,2, Marcus T Pearce3, Jacob Spitzer2
11 College of Visual & Performing Arts, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)
|November 9, 2018
Summary
Listeners develop tonal expectations in music based on frequent patterns. Stable melodic and harmonic endings in musical cadences are most expected, confirmed by cognitive models and participant responses.
Area of Science:
- Music Cognition
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Computational Musicology
Background:
- Tonal music context primes listeners for specific continuations.
- Previous research often lacked real-world musical examples and integrated sensory-cognitive models.
- Few studies combined melodic and harmonic elements in computational models of expectation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To measure expectations for recurrent tonal music cadences.
- To simulate findings using sensory-cognitive models of auditory expectation.
- To investigate the interplay of sensory and cognitive mechanisms in tonal expectancy.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Participants rated expectancy for melodic tones and chords in cadences.
- Experiment 2: Participants rapidly identified in-tune vs. out-of-tune target events.
- Computational simulations using three sensory-cognitive auditory expectation models.
Main Results:
- Stable melodic tones and chords in cadences received highest expectancy ratings.
- Listeners responded fastest and most accurately to stable cadential events.
- Model simulations supported a cognitive interpretation of tonal processing.
Conclusions:
- Tonal expectation arises from frequent co-occurrence of musical events.
- Listeners' exposure to tonal music shapes their predictive processing.
- Cognitive mechanisms, driven by musical surface patterns, underlie tonal expectancies.
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