Memory for Tonal Pitches

Akiva-Kabiri, Lilach; Vecchi, Tomaso; Granot, Roni; Basso, Demis; Schön, Daniele

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04787.x

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…More complex melodies are likely to place higher demands on the limited capacity of working memory, resulting in lower memorability. There are several different ways of operationalizing melodic complexity; previous studies have used the number of notes in the melody (Akiva-Kabiri, Vecchi, Granot, Basso, & Schön, 2009;Brittin, 2000;DeWitt & Crowder, 1986;Edworthy, 1985;Schulze et al, 2012), and some studies have also used contour complexity (Croonen, 1994;. While high length is reliably associated with poor melody discrimination performance, the effect of contour complexity seems less reliable.…”

Section: Memory Retentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

Harrison

Musil

Müllensiefen

2016

Journal of New Music Research

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Melodic discrimination tests have been used for many years to assess individual differences in musical abilities. These tests are usually analysed using classical test theory. However, classical test theory is not well suited for optimizing test efficiency or for investigating construct validity. This paper addresses this problem by applying modern item response modelling techniques to three melodic discrimination tests. First, descriptive item response modelling is used to develop a short melodic discrimination test from a larger item pool. The resulting test meets the test-theoretic assumptions of a Rasch (1960) item response model and possesses good concurrent and convergent validity as well as good testing efficiency. Second, an explicit cognitive model of melodic discrimination is used to generate hypotheses relating item difficulty to structural item features such as melodic complexity, similarity, and tonalness. These hypotheses are then tested on response data from three melodic discrimination tests (n = 317) using explanatory item response modelling. Results indicate that item difficulty is predicted by melodic complexity and melodic similarity, consistent with the proposed cognitive model. This provides useful evidence for construct validity. This paper therefore demonstrates the benefits of item response modelling both for efficient test construction and for test validity.

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Section: Memory Retentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Akiva-Kabiri et al, 2009;DeWitt & Crowder, 1986;Schulze et al, 2012). In this paper we use the number of notes in the melody as well as two additional measures of melodic complexity.…”

Section: Melodic Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

Harrison

Musil

Müllensiefen

2016

Journal of New Music Research

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“…Over four different blocks, we manipulated tone duration (100 ms, 350 ms) and ITI (present or absent), which also resulted in changes in stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, corresponding to the sum of tone duration and ITI). It has been demonstrated that short-term memory abilities decrease with increasing memory load for auditory and visual modalities 18 27 32 . We thus manipulated the sequence length (three or four tones) to test whether the benefits of an increased time to encode tone sequences can be observed in particular when the task difficulty increased.…”

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confidence: 99%

Impaired encoding of rapid pitch information underlies perception and memory deficits in congenital amusia

Albouy

Cousineau

Caclin

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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Recent theories suggest that the basis of neurodevelopmental auditory disorders such as dyslexia or specific language impairment might be a low-level sensory dysfunction. In the present study we test this hypothesis in congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in the processing of pitch-based material. We manipulated the temporal characteristics of auditory stimuli and investigated the influence of the time given to encode pitch information on participants’ performance in discrimination and short-term memory. Our results show that amusics’ performance in such tasks scales with the duration available to encode acoustic information. This suggests that in auditory neuro-developmental disorders, abnormalities in early steps of the auditory processing can underlie the high-level deficits (here musical disabilities). Observing that the slowing down of temporal dynamics improves amusics’ pitch abilities allows considering this approach as a potential tool for remediation in developmental auditory disorders.

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“…All melodies produced by Racchman-Oct2010 were subsequently filtered to ensure that they contained no out-of-key notes, and transposed to the key of D major. For manipulating item difficulty we varied item length based on evidence showing that longer melodies are harder to encode (Brittin, 2000 ; Akiva-Kabiri et al, 2009 ). Five different levels of melody length were therefore employed, staggered in logarithmic steps (lengths of 6, 7, 9, 12, 16 notes).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the importance of self-theories of intelligence and musicality for students' academic and musical achievement

et al. 2015

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Musical abilities and active engagement with music have been shown to be positively associated with many cognitive abilities as well as social skills and academic performance in secondary school students. While there is evidence from intervention studies that musical training can be a cause of these positive relationships, recent findings in the literature have suggested that other factors, such as genetics, family background or personality traits, might also be contributing factors. In addition, there is mounting evidence that self-concepts and beliefs can affect academic performance independently of intellectual ability. Students who believe that intelligence is malleable are more likely to attribute poor academic performances to effort rather than ability, and are more likely to take remedial action to improve their performance. However, it is currently not known whether student's beliefs about the nature of musical talent also influence the development of musical abilities in a similar fashion. Therefore, this study introduces a short self-report measure termed “Musical Self-Theories and Goals,” closely modeled on validated measures for self-theories in academic scenarios. Using this measure the study investigates whether musical self-theories are related to students' musical development as indexed by their concurrent musical activities and their performance on a battery of listening tests. We use data from a cross-sectional sample of 313 secondary school students to construct a network model describing the relationships between self-theories and academic as well as musical outcome measures, while also assessing potential effects of intelligence and the Big Five personality dimensions. Results from the network model indicate that self-theories of intelligence and musicality are closely related. In addition, both kinds of self-theories are connected to the students' academic achievement through the personality dimension conscientiousness and academic effort. Finally, applying the do-calculus method to the network model we estimate that the size of the assumed causal effects between musical self-theories and academic achievement lie between 0.07 and 0.15 standard deviations.

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Memory for Tonal Pitches

Cited by 13 publications

References 9 publications

Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

Impaired encoding of rapid pitch information underlies perception and memory deficits in congenital amusia

Investigating the importance of self-theories of intelligence and musicality for students' academic and musical achievement

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