Automatic Responses to Acoustically Rough Intervals: Evidence from a Word Evaluation task

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to determine which acoustic components of harmonic consonance and dissonance influence automatic responses in a simple cognitive task. In a series of experiments, ten musical interval pairs were used to measure the influence of acoustic roughness and harmonicity on response times in an affective priming task conducted online. There was a significant correlation between the difference of roughness for each pair of intervals and a response time index. Harmonicity did not influence response times on the cognitive task. More detailed analysis suggests that the presence of priming in intervals is binary: in the negative primes that create congruency effects the intervals’ fundamentals and overtones coincide within the same equivalent rectangular bandwidth (i.e. the minor and major seconds). Intervals that fall outside this equivalent rectangular bandwidth do not elicit priming effects, regardless of their dissonance or cultural conventions of negative affect. The results are discussed in the context of recent developments in consonance/dissonance research and vocal similarity.