Cross-cultural differences in meter perception

Kalender, Beste; Trehub, Sandra E.; Schellenberg, E. Glenn

doi:10.1007/s00426-012-0427-y

Cited by 26 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(26 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The Bulgarian folk musicians displayed a weaker bias away from the 3:2 rhythm and showed less variability in their behavior than did all other groups. This is in line with several studies of participants with cultural backgrounds in the Balkans, Turkey, and India that evidence positive influence of cultural familiarity with 3:2-based rhythms on processing of such rhythms (Hannon & Trehub, 2005a;Kalender et al, 2013;Ullal-Gupta et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…In particular, enculturated familiarity with music showing mildly complex rhythmic ratios such as 2:2:3 can positively override the potential difficulty of processing such rhythms. 1 These rhythms are relatively difficult for North Americans to perceive (Repp, London, & Keller, 2005;Snyder, Hannon, Large, & Christiansen, 2006), but not for participants with Balkan, Turkish, or Indian backgrounds (Hannon, Soley, & Ullal-Gupta, 2012;Kalender, Trehub, & Schellenberg, 2013;Ullal-Gupta, Hannon, & Snyder, 2014), as the music in these countries more prominently features such rhythmic patterns, nor for very young North American infants, suggesting that the adult North Americans' bias towards isochronous meters reflect their specific enculturation rather than a biological predisposition (Hannon & Trehub, 2005a). Infants and young children can easily learn to perceive these kinds of complex rhythms as a result of passive exposure; such learning is achieved less rapidly and fluently by older children and adults (Hannon & Trehub, 2005b;Hannon, Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden, & Tichko, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It has long been assumed that rhythm cognition builds on perceptual categories tied to prototypes defined by small-integer ratios, such as 1:1 and 2:1. This study aims to evaluate the relative contributions of both generic constraints and selected cultural particularities in shaping rhythmic prototypes. We experimentally tested musicians’ synchronization (finger tapping) with simple periodic rhythms at two different tempi with participants in Mali, Bulgaria, and Germany. We found support both for the classic assumption that 1:1 and 2:1 prototypes are widespread across cultures and for culture-dependent prototypes characterized by more complex ratios such as 3:2 and 4:3. Our findings suggest that music-cultural environments specify links between music performance patterns and perceptual prototypes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For instance, future research should explore whether more fine-grained segmentation skills [ 26 ] and better memory for pitch characteristics of novel home-culture music [ 76 ] in style-specific experts can be ascribed to more differentiated predictive processing. Similar accounts may explain why listeners sometimes perceive culturally familiar music as less tense [ 77 ] and less complex [ 78 ] than unfamiliar music and show greater accuracy in detecting intended emotions [ 79 ], mistunings [ 80 ], rhythmic deviations [ 81 ], and metric violations [ 82 ] in culturally familiar music. The last effect may, in turn, give rise to enhanced ability to perceive and tap in time with music on a wider range of levels within the metrical hierarchy [ 83 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

"If You Have to Ask, You'll Never Know": Effects of Specialised Stylistic Expertise on Predictive Processing of Music

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Musical expertise entails meticulous stylistic specialisation and enculturation. Even so, research on musical training effects has focused on generalised comparisons between musicians and non-musicians, and cross-cultural work addressing specialised expertise has traded cultural specificity and sensitivity for other methodological limitations. This study aimed to experimentally dissociate the effects of specialised stylistic training and general musical expertise on the perception of melodies. Non-musicians and professional musicians specialising in classical music or jazz listened to sampled renditions of saxophone solos improvised by Charlie Parker in the bebop style. Ratings of explicit uncertainty and expectedness for different continuations of each melodic excerpt were collected. An information-theoretic model of expectation enabled selection of stimuli affording highly certain continuations in the bebop style, but highly uncertain continuations in the context of general tonal expectations, and vice versa. The results showed that expert musicians have acquired probabilistic characteristics of music influencing their experience of expectedness and predictive uncertainty. While classical musicians had internalised key aspects of the bebop style implicitly, only jazz musicians’ explicit uncertainty ratings reflected the computational estimates, and jazz-specific expertise modulated the relationship between explicit and inferred uncertainty data. In spite of this, there was no evidence that non-musicians and classical musicians used a stylistically irrelevant cognitive model of general tonal music providing support for the theory of cognitive firewalls between stylistic models in predictive processing of music.

show abstract

“…However, it is not only experiences from the lifetime scale that affect the process; more short-term priors also influence predictions that are made on a moment-to-moment basis. For example, while the experience of a metrically complex rhythmic pattern will depend on whether one has been exposed to such rhythms in playing ( Vuust et al, 2012b ) or listening ( Kalender et al, 2013 ), the perception of it will also depend on how frequently this pattern is featured within the current musical context ( Huron, 2006 ).…”

Section: Predictive Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhythmic complexity and predictive coding: a novel approach to modeling rhythm and meter perception in music

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Musical rhythm, consisting of apparently abstract intervals of accented temporal events, has a remarkable capacity to move our minds and bodies. How does the cognitive system enable our experiences of rhythmically complex music? In this paper, we describe some common forms of rhythmic complexity in music and propose the theory of predictive coding (PC) as a framework for understanding how rhythm and rhythmic complexity are processed in the brain. We also consider why we feel so compelled by rhythmic tension in music. First, we consider theories of rhythm and meter perception, which provide hierarchical and computational approaches to modeling. Second, we present the theory of PC, which posits a hierarchical organization of brain responses reflecting fundamental, survival-related mechanisms associated with predicting future events. According to this theory, perception and learning is manifested through the brain’s Bayesian minimization of the error between the input to the brain and the brain’s prior expectations. Third, we develop a PC model of musical rhythm, in which rhythm perception is conceptualized as an interaction between what is heard (“rhythm”) and the brain’s anticipatory structuring of music (“meter”). Finally, we review empirical studies of the neural and behavioral effects of syncopation, polyrhythm and groove, and propose how these studies can be seen as special cases of the PC theory. We argue that musical rhythm exploits the brain’s general principles of prediction and propose that pleasure and desire for sensorimotor synchronization from musical rhythm may be a result of such mechanisms.

show abstract

Cross-cultural differences in meter perception

Cited by 26 publications

References 29 publications

Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures

Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures

"If You Have to Ask, You'll Never Know": Effects of Specialised Stylistic Expertise on Predictive Processing of Music

Rhythmic complexity and predictive coding: a novel approach to modeling rhythm and meter perception in music

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About