Expectation in Melody: The Influence of Context and Learning

Pearce, Marcus T.; Wiggins, Geraínt A.

doi:10.1525/mp.2006.23.5.377

Cited by 233 publications

(237 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(214 reference statements)

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“…The collections of melodies used for training the probabilistic models. Pearce and Wiggins (2006) showed that IDyOM models trained with this corpus can accurately predict human pitch expectations.…”

Section: Model Implementationsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The probabilities generated by IDyOM have been shown to predict listeners' expectations for melodic pitch better than existing rule-based models based on the IR theory (Pearce et al 2010b;Pearce and Wiggins 2006). Here we take the same model with two differences.…”

Section: The Idyom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In one experiment, for example, the probabilistic model accounted for 85% of the variance in listener's expectations elicited by fragments of British folk songs (Pearce and Wiggins 2006). It consistently predicts listeners' pitch expectations better than the best-performing rulebased model (Schellenberg 1997) in the literature.…”

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confidence: 94%

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The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

2010

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Introduction Grouping and boundary perception are central to the understanding and modelling of core tasks in many areas of cognitive science. They are fundamental processes in, for example, natural language processing (eg speech segmentation and word discoveryöBrent 1999b; Jusczyk 1997), motor learning (eg identifying behavioural episodes öReynolds et al 2007; Newtson 1973), memory storage and retrieval (eg chunkingöKurby and Zacks 2007) and visual perception (eg analysing spatial organisation öMarr 1982). Our focus in this paper is on the perception and cognition of music (Krumhansl 1990; Temperley 2001), where the process by which the human perceptual system groups sequential musical elements together is one of the most fundamental issues. In particular, we examine the grouping of musical elements into contiguous segments that occur sequentially in time or, to put it another way, the identification of boundaries between the final element of one segment and the first element of the subsequent one. This way of structuring a musical surface is usually referred to as grouping (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983) or segmentation (Cambouropoulos 2006). We distinguish this kind of perceptual aggregation of auditory elements from the integration, or fusion, of auditory elements that occur simultaneously in time and also from the segregation of parallel auditory streams (Bregman 1990). In musical terms, the kinds of groups we consider correspond with motifs, phrases, sections and other aspects of musical form. We use the term grouping structure to refer to a piece of music structured in this way. It is taken that, just as speech is perceptually segmented into phonemes, and then words which subsequently provide the building blocks for the perception of phrases and complete utterances (Brent 1999b; Jusczyk 1997), motifs or phrases in music are identified by listeners, stored in memory and made available for inclusion in higher-level structural groups (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983; Peretz 1989; Tan et al 1981). The lowlevel organisation of the musical surface into groups allows the use of these primitive perceptual units in more complex structural processing and may alleviate demands on memory.

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Section: Model Implementationsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: The Idyom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

2010

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“…A model of auditory expectation, based on a variable-order Markov model, was used to quantify the predictability of each tone-pip within the experimental sequences (64). This model has previously been used successfully to predict listeners' pitch expectations in musical melody assessed both behaviorally and using EEG (65,66). Here, we use the responses of the model as an ideal observer to compare with those of the participants.…”

Section: Experiments 4 (Meg)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain responses in humans reveal ideal observer-like sensitivity to complex acoustic patterns

Barascud

Pearce

Griffiths

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We use behavioral methods, magnetoencephalography, and functional MRI to investigate how human listeners discover temporal patterns and statistical regularities in complex sound sequences. Sensitivity to patterns is fundamental to sensory processing, in particular in the auditory system, because most auditory signals only have meaning as successions over time. Previous evidence suggests that the brain is tuned to the statistics of sensory stimulation. However, the process through which this arises has been elusive. We demonstrate that listeners are remarkably sensitive to the emergence of complex patterns within rapidly evolving sound sequences, performing on par with an ideal observer model. Brain responses reveal online processes of evidence accumulationdynamic changes in tonic activity precisely correlate with the expected precision or predictability of ongoing auditory input-both in terms of deterministic (first-order) structure and the entropy of random sequences. Source analysis demonstrates an interaction between primary auditory cortex, hippocampus, and inferior frontal gyrus in the process of discovering the regularity within the ongoing sound sequence. The results are consistent with precision based predictive coding accounts of perceptual inference and provide compelling neurophysiological evidence of the brain's capacity to encode high-order temporal structure in sensory signals.A ccumulating work suggests that the brain is sensitive to statistical regularities in sensory input, at multiple time scales (1-9). The auditory system has been a useful testbed to investigate these processes (2, 3, 9-13), largely due to the vantage point provided by the mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm (12, 13). The MMN is an auditory-evoked response generated by sounds violating some regular aspect of the prior sequence and is hypothesized to reflect a discrepancy between the memory trace, or expectations, generated by the standard stimulus, and the deviant information (12,13). A large body of MMN work has demonstrated that listeners are sensitive to the violation of a variety of acoustic sequences, including very complex regularities (14, 15), and interpreted as indirect evidence for exquisite sensitivity to patterns in sound.Due to the physical constraints that characterize animate objects in the environment, sounds emanating from those sources are usually statistically regular and often repetitive (e.g., flapping wings and locomotion sounds). The ability to discover regularities within the sensory input is therefore a critical aspect of scene analysis: providing the anchor that enables an observer to identify and track a behaviorally relevant signal from within the brouhaha of a busy scene. Detecting temporally recurrent auditory features enables listeners to recognize auditory objects (because most auditory signals only have meaning as patterns over time), but also to form rules, or models, that characterize the past and expected behavior of objects within the environment (4, 16). Indeed, experimental work demonstrat...

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“…Tonality is an important context for musical events, and priming experiments have demonstrated that this is a significant dictator of whether one tone is perceived to 'fit' with the previous (Krumhansl, 1990). Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that is it is possible to anticipate the next tone in a musical melody, given the strength of tonal context in anticipation of musical events (Pearce & Wiggins, 2006). [2] The lack of consideration of tonality limits somewhat the usefulness of the proposed model, as an attempt to account for auditory events which are both musical and non-musical should necessarily factor tonality into the design.…”

Section: Tonality and Metermentioning

confidence: 99%

A Discussion of the Effect of Musical Context on Perception of Succession of Musical Events, and its Relevance for Philosophical Models of Temporal Experience

Phillips

2015

EMR

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The article reviewed in this commentary takes philosophical models of temporal experience as its starting point, in an exploration of how an "experience of succession" may be distinguished from a mere "succession of experience". It is proposed that context is the important factor in differentiating the two experiences, rather than duration. Context is accounted for in broad terms, with specific discussion of gesture, performance environment, and mental imagery. The discussion may usefully pave the way for future collaboration between philosophers and psychologists. However, there are multiple fundamental findings in music cognition research, vital to any consideration of the context in which musical experiences occur (e.g. meter, tonality, expectation, familiarity), that could be factored into this discussion. The ideas discussed could be developed with greater consideration of recent empirical studies in music perception. Perhaps then a theoretical model of the experience of succession of musical events could give rise to experimental hypotheses, which may then be tested in order to further refine such models. KON (2014, this issue) proposes that theoretical models of time perception may incorporate empirical investigations in order to be useful in future work relating to embodied music cognition. To demonstrate this, the author explores the phenomena of the succession of experience (SoE), and the experience of succession (EoS). Whilst the former describes an awareness of multiple experiences in succession, the latter includes an additional factor -the sensation of one experience as following on from the previous. It is proposed that the two are not distinguished from one another merely by duration (i.e. EoSs as occurring over a short interval, after Phillips, forthcoming), but rather that their distinction depends upon the context of the experience. An example given is that of a C major broken chord, played either allegro (lasting no more than a second in all), or with an interval of an hour between each of the three notes. It is proposed that the former gives rise to an EoS, as if you were to hear the G4 of this sequence your attention would encompass all of the notes in the chord. It could be argued that this awareness would be direct and not require inference. An SoE, on the other hand, would need inference in the recall of the previous notes, which would appear in consciousness as separate entities. However, once again the extent to which the experience is direct and requires inference is found to be inadequate in accounting for the difference between an EoS and an SoE, particularly when considering the roles of attention and memory. The paper seeks to outline how context may be a more useful tool than duration in distinguishing the two experiences, and how this factor may be included in three philosophical models: 1) the Retentionalist Model captures the notion of the specious present, and proposes that previous events may be "retained" to the extent that they appear simultaneous with the curr...

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Expectation in Melody: The Influence of Context and Learning

Cited by 233 publications

References 78 publications

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

The Role of Expectation and Probabilistic Learning in Auditory Boundary Perception: A Model Comparison

Brain responses in humans reveal ideal observer-like sensitivity to complex acoustic patterns

A Discussion of the Effect of Musical Context on Perception of Succession of Musical Events, and its Relevance for Philosophical Models of Temporal Experience

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