Music, the Arts, and Ideas

“…Simply defined, "expectation 11 refers to the anticipation of upcoming information based on past and current information. The concept of expectancy has traditionally received, and continues to receive, a great deal of attention from both a music-theoretic (e.g., Meyer, 1956Meyer, ,1965Narmour, 1989Narmour, , 1990Narmour, ,1992 and psychological viewpoint (e.g., Bharucha, 1987Bharucha, , 1994Carlsen, 1981Carlsen, , 1982Carlsen, Divenyi, & Taylor, 1970;Cuddy & Lunney, 1995;Dowling, 1994;Jones, 1976Jones, , 1981Jones, , 1982Jones, , 1990Krumhansl, 1995;Schellenberg, 1996Schellenberg, ,1997Schmuckler, 1989Schmuckler, ,1990Schmuckler & Boltz, 1994;Unyk & Carlsen, 1987).Given this interest, it is not surprising that expectation has been found to play a critical role in many aspects of musical processing. One such area involves listeners' judgments of, and responses to, musical passages.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Expectancy effects in memory for melodies.

Schmuckler

1997

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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Two experiments explored the relation between melodic expectancy and melodic memory. In Experiment 1, listeners rated the degree to which different endings confirmed their expectations for a set of melodies. After providing these expectancy ratings, listeners received a recognition memory test in which they discriminated previously heard melodies from new melodies. Recognition memory in this task positively correlated with perceived expectancy, and was related to the estimated tonal coherence of these melodies. Experiment 2 extended these results, demonstrating better recognition memory for high expectancy melodies, relative to medium and low expectancy melodies. This experiment also observed asymmetrical memory confusions as a function of perceived expectancy. These findings fit with a model of musical memory in which schematically central events are better remembered than schematically peripheral events.The generation of expectations has been recognized as a central factor in listeners' perceptions of music. Simply defined, "expectation 11 refers to the anticipation of upcoming information based on past and current information. The concept of expectancy has traditionally received, and continues to receive, a great deal of attention from both a music-theoretic (e.g., Meyer, 1956Meyer, ,1965Narmour, 1989Narmour, , 1990Narmour, ,1992 and psychological viewpoint (e.g., Bharucha, 1987Bharucha, , 1994Carlsen, 1981Carlsen, , 1982Carlsen, Divenyi, & Taylor, 1970;Cuddy & Lunney, 1995;Dowling, 1994;Jones, 1976Jones, , 1981Jones, , 1982Jones, , 1990Krumhansl, 1995;Schellenberg, 1996Schellenberg, ,1997Schmuckler, 1989Schmuckler, ,1990Schmuckler & Boltz, 1994;Unyk & Carlsen, 1987).Given this interest, it is not surprising that expectation has been found to play a critical role in many aspects of musical processing. One such area involves listeners' judgments of, and responses to, musical passages. For example, Schmuckler (1989) had listeners provide goodness-of-fit ratings for a set of continuations of melodic, harmonic, and combined melodic-harmonic passages. These studies uncovered systematic variation in listeners' judgments of these continuations, with some endings receiving high expectancy ratings, whereas other endings received relatively low expectancy ratings. Additionally, these studies demonstrated that expectancies were predictable from various music-theoretic and perceptual/cognitive principles of pattern organization. Similar results have been observed by Cuddy and Lunney (1995), Krumhansl (1995), andSchellenberg (1996), in their tests of Narmour's (1990Narmour's ( ,1992) implication-realization model. Together, these findings suggest that judgments of a musical event vary with the perceived expectancy of that passage, with expectations quantifiable on the basis of a range of factors.A second area in which expectancies play a role in musical perception is the processing and encoding of musical information. For example, Bharucha and colleagues (Bharucha & Stoeckig, 1986, 1987Tekman & Bharucha, 1992) de...

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“…The present study is inspired by extant research and Meyer's (1967) proposition that the amount of musical information in a piece of music and a listener's prior musical experiences and expectancies affects the listener's response. Although research has demonstrated that age and experience promote a gradual increase in one's ability to perceive, manipulate, and discriminate music, there is no certainty as to when children, in particular, become acculturated to and perceive Western major tonality.…”

Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 98%

Elementary Children’s Tonal Awareness as Related to Perception of Tonal Dissonance

Norris

2013

Update: Applications of Research in Music Education

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Recent research studies examined musical perception differences between adults and children. Holohan, Saunders, and Goldberg (2000) revealed that collegiate musicians discerned similarities and differences between pairs of tonal patterns significantly more accurately than college nonmusicians. The differences, however, in scores between the same nonmusician group and a group of first graders were found to be statistically insignificant, although the speed with which the nonmusicians responded was significantly faster than that of the first graders.Schellenberg, Purdy, Adachi, and McKinnon (2002) examined and compared melodic expectancy in children and adults in two settings. First, subjects were asked to rate continuations of four tonal melodies on a 7-point scale ranging from "extremely poor" continuation to "extremely good" continuation. The researchers found that accuracy of ratings increased with age and exposure 473612U PDate31210.117 7/8755123312473612UpdateNorris AbstractThis study investigated children's tonal awareness by measuring their abilities to detect dissonance in major tonality using the author-created Tonal Dissonance Detection Test. A two-way analysis of variance of 312 elementary school subjects' Tonal Dissonance Detection Test scores revealed that first-and second-graders' dissonance detection abilities were significantly weaker than those of their third-to sixth-grade counterparts. Subsequent analysis revealed neither a significant gender effect nor interaction between grade level and gender. Findings are consistent with related study of the perception of tonality and tonal expectancies in children and adults. Given the homogeneity of the sample, the longevity of the music instructor, the school's sequential Kodály-based curriculum, and conclusions of prior research, discussion considered the impact of musical instruction and musical development on the ability to perceive tonality. The author suggested the two aforementioned constructs might be studied by comparing the same perceptual skills of children from both Western and non-Western cultures.

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Music, the Arts, and Ideas

Cited by 91 publications

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Musical Meaning in a Broader Perspective

Musical Meaning in a Broader Perspective

Expectancy effects in memory for melodies.

Elementary Children’s Tonal Awareness as Related to Perception of Tonal Dissonance

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