In an experiment aimed at assessing dimensional properties of musical space, musicians rated the similarity of pairs of brief melodies on a 9-point scale. From our review of previous work, we hypothesized (1) that pitch variables would be considered more important than time or rhythmic variables by our subjects and (2) that the metrical consonance of pitch and duration patterns would generate a factor related to pattern regularity in listeners' musical space. Four melodies and their inversions were played in each of four rhythmic patterns (anapestic, dactylic, iambic, and trochaic) for a total of 1024 pattern pairs. Both multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses of similarity showed that at least five dimensions were needed for a good accounting of the perceptual space of these melodies. Surprisingly, the major dimensions found were rhythmic: (1) duple or triple rhythm, (2) accent first or last, and (3) iambic-dactylic versus trochaic-anapestic. Other dimensions were (4) rising or falling pitch and (5) the number of pitch—contour inflections. The tendency to rate patterns on the basis of time or rhythm (Dimensions I, II, and III) was negatively correlated with the tendency to rate patterns on the basis of pitch (Dimensions IV and V). It could not be determined whether this result depends on cognitive processing limitations, attention, or preferences. No factor was found that related to pattern regularity as we defined it.
Listeners' accuracy in discriminating one temporal pattern from another was measured in three psychophysical experiments. When the standard pattern consisted of equally timed (isochronic) brief tones, whose interonset intervals (lOIs) were 50, 100, or 200 msec, the accuracy in detecting an asynchrony or deviation of one tone in the sequence was about as would be predicted from older research on the discrimination of single time intervals (~-~at an IOI of 200 msec, 11%-12% at an 101 of 100 msec, and almost 20% at an 101 of 50 msec). In a series of 6 or 10 tones, this accuracy was independent of position of delay for lOIs of 100 and 200 msec. At 50 msec, however, accuracy depended on position, being worst in initial positions and best in final positions. When one tone in a series of six has a frequency different from the others, there is some evidence (at 101 = 200 msec) that interval discrimination is relatively poorer for the tone with the different frequency. Similarly, even if all tones have the same frequency but one interval in the series is made twice as long as the others, temporal discrimination is poorer for the tones bordering the longer interval, although this result is dependent on tempo or 10I. Results with these temporally more complex patterns may be interpreted in part by applying the relative Weber ratio to the intervals before and after the delayed tone. Alternatively, these experiments may show the influence of accent on the temporal discrimination of individual tones.Temporal aspects of auditory perception, including observations on recognition and discrimination of rhythmic patterns as well as models and theories of timing and rhythmic groups, have recently become the subject of a rich body of literature, particularly in music perception. Different studies have emphasized different aspectspreference for certain phrases, recognition of melodic segments, imitative tapping to infer a "representation" of patterns, and so forth. Our interest here, somewhat less grand, concerns listeners' accuracy in the discrimination of temporal patterns.The timing of successive elements in an auditory pattern is critical for the identification both of particular sounds and of characteristics of patterns as a whole. The perception of stress in speech or of accent and rhythmic structure in music requires at least that listeners can discriminate different dimensions of individual sounds, including duration, and also different time intervals separating the onsets of successive sounds. The classical literature on temporal discrimination (Woodrow, 1951) suggests that for a reasonably large range of standard time values, discrimination is reliably good when deviations from the standard are of the order of 10%. Woodrow's chapter dis- tinguishes clearly between two types of intervals used in studies on temporal discrimination: (1) empty intervals, or the time intervening between two boundary events, whether sounds or lights, and (2) continuous stimuli, in which judgments are made about the apparent duration of the events...
This study was designed to explore the kinds of temporal patterning that foster pitch-difference discrimination. Musicians and nonmusicians rated the similarity of pairs of 9-note melodies that could differ in the pitch chroma of a single note at any of five serial positions. In a complete factorial design, there were 84 standard melodies (4 pitch patterns x 21 rhythms), each of which was paired with 10 octave-raised comparisons; 5 comparisons were identical to the standard in chroma and 5 had a single changed chroma. A literature review suggested that temporal accent occurs for tones initiating a lengthened temporal interval and for tones initiating a group of three or more intervals; pitch-level accent is a product of pitch skips on the order of 4 semitones or of the change of direction of the pitch contour. In this study there were three classes of temporal patterns. Rhythmically consonant patterns had temporal accenting that was always metrically in phase with pitch-level accenting and promoted the best performance. Rhythmically out-of-phase consonant patterns had temporal accenting and pitch-level accenting that occurred regularly at the same metrical rate, but the two were never in phase. Rhythmically dissonant patterns had temporal accenting and pitch-level accenting at different metrical rates. Patterns in the latter two classes sound syncopated, and they generally resulted in poorer pitch-discrimination performance. Musicians performed better than nonmusicians on all patterns; however, an account of performance in terms of "rhythmic nonconsonance" generated by the above three categories predicted 63% and 42% of the variance in musicians' and nonmusicians' performance, respectively. Performance at all serial positions was generally best for tones initiating long sound-filled intervals and was also better at a particular serial position when pitch-level accenting took the form of a pitch contour inflection instead of a unidirectional pitch skip. There was some evidence that rhythmic consonance early in a pattern improved musicians' performance at a later serial position.According to Cooper and Meyer (1960), accenting is the basis for grouping in melodies. We assume that melodies whose pitches may be easily grouped constitute "good Gestalts" that are more easily coded and remembered. Accent is a perceptual phenomenon that is usually but not necessarily correlated with cues that may occur in each of several physical dimensions. Monahan and Carterette (1985) distinguished five major sources of cues for accent in monophonic melodies: (1) temporal patterning, (2) pitch-pattern shape (pitch contour and pitch interval sizes), (3) dynamic patterning, (4) the tonal system to which the set of pitches belong, and (5) timbral patterning. In our discussion we will refer to physical cues as accenting and to perceptual phenomena as accent.
Listeners discriminated between 6-tone rhythmic patterns that differed only in the delay of the temporal position of one of the tones. On each trial, feedback was given and the subject's performance determined the amount of delay on the next trial. The 6 tones of the patterns marked off 5 intervals. In the first experiment, patterns comprised 3 "short" and 2 "long" intervals: 12121, 21121, and so forth, where the long (2) was twice the length of a short (1). In the second experiment, patterns were the complements of the patterns in the first experiment and comprised 2 shorts and 3 longs: 21212, 12212, and so forth. Each pattern was tested 45 times (5 positions ofthe delayed tone x 3 tempos x 3 replications). Consistent with previous work on simple interval discrimination, absolute discrimination (At in milliseconds) was poorer the longer the intervals (i.e., the slower the tempo). Measures of relative discrimination (At/t, where t was the short interval, the long interval, or the average of 2 intervals surrounding the delayed tone) were better the slower the tempo. Beyond these global results, large interactions of pattern with position of the delayed tone and tempo suggest that different models of performance are needed to explain behavior at the different tempos. A Weber's law model fit the slow-tempo data better than did a model based on positions of
This experiment explored the structural representation of rhythm by having subjects rate the similarity of pairs of polyrhythms. Three different polyrhythms were employed (3 x 4, 3 x 5, and 4 x 5). Although subjects were instructed to ignore pitch, two types of pitch information (pitch proximity and tonal relatedness) were varied between the tones defining the polyrhythms in order to assess their influence on the similarity space of the rhythms. The results showed that, independently of pitch, some rhythm combinations were considered more similar than others. Pitch information had a uniform effect on polyrhythm similarity, systematically increasing or decreasing the similarity among all rhythms by roughly the same amount. This suggests that pitch information may have been processed independently of rhythmic information, and that only at another stage in processing is information from the two dimensions integrated.Current theoretical models of rhythm perception employ hierarchical trees of varying degrees of complexity to explain perceptual grouping of temporal sequences (
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