Listeners can discriminate among major chord positions

Listeners judged whether two sequentially presented major chords were the same. When both chords were based on the same root, listeners discriminated between different chord positions, e.g., root position, first inversion, second inversion. The ability of listeners to discriminate between chord positions suggests that harmonic equivalence of different chord positions does not depend on perceptual equivalence and instead arises from a more cognitive representation.