Perception of contour in music reading

Musicians and nonmusicians were required to make written reports of briefly presented displays of pitch symbols. Whilst musicians were not superior to nonmusicians at identifying individual notes they were superior at retaining information about the contour of note sequences. In addition, manipulation of task difficulty by requiring whole or partial report of the displays had a significant effect on performance only when global, rather than specific, response measures were taken. The results are in accordance with the theory that global analysis precedes detailed analysis in perceptual processing.