Six experiments examined the cognitive reality of hierarchic structure in music. The first experiment showed that subjects were only moderately able to match a performed rendition of a hierarchic structure to the piece of music from which it was derived, with performance slightly better than chance. Metric accent emerged as a significant predictor of the tones perceived by subjects as structurally important. The second experiment showed that subjects' correct matchings were unlikely to be based on aesthetic preference, because performed renditions of (rule-governed) structures were not regarded as aesthetically preferable to nonstructures. The third experiment attempted to increase subjects' matching of structures and their original pieces through various task modifications, but these modifications did not increase performance over the success rate achieved in Experiment 1. Three additional experiments determined whether evidence of the distinction between structureand surface could be obtained in various similarity judgment tasks. Pairs of musical fragments were composed so that the members of each pair embodied (1) the same structure and same surface harmony, or (2) the same structure but different surface harmony, or (3) a different structure but same surface harmony. The rating task used in Experiments 4 and 5 showed that the members of Type-2 pairs of fragments were perceived to be just as similar as the members of Type-1 pairs, but Type-3 pairs were rated significantly lower in similarity. Thus, similarity judgments were based on underlying hierarchic structure, even in the face of radical harmony differences on the surface. This effect increased in strength with repeated hearing. The results support the cognitive reality of hierarchic structure, but are influenced by the type of perception used in a particular similarity judgment task and by the experience of repeated hearings.
The hypothesis was tested that the coupling of parallax shifts between objects depicted on a monitor screen around a fixation point with the head movements of an observer viewing this screen monocularly around a point coinciding with the fixation point is sufficient to create a convincing depth impression and to enable the observer to make reliable estimations of depth. The estimates were based on monocular vision and involved the aligning of wedges. The investigation consisted of two analogous experiments carried out simultaneously, one on depth estimations virtually in the screen and one on depth estimations virtually in front of the screen. In each experiment three conditions were compared: an active condition in which the coupling of parallax shifts and observer's head movements operated, a passive condition in which it did not, and a real-life set-up to measure the maximum reliability in depth estimation. The hypothesis is confirmed: in the active condition the variances in the alignments are significantly smaller than in the passive condition and approach those in the real-life set-up. This holds not only for estimates in the screen but also for estimates in front of the screen, that is, we can make a thing apparently leap out of the screen towards the observer. Results are interpreted against the background of the debate between the direct and the indirect theories of perception.
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