Musical Garden Paths: Evidence for Syntactic Revision Beyond the Linguistic Domain

Abstract

While theoretical and empirical insights suggest that the capacity to represent and process complex syntax is crucial in language as well as other domains, it is still unclear whether specific parsing mechanisms are also shared across domains. Focusing on the musical domain, we developed a novel behavioral paradigm to investigate whether a phenomenon of syntactic revision occurs in the processing of tonal melodies under analogous conditions as in language. We present the first proof‐of‐existence for syntactic revision in a set of tonally ambiguous melodies, supporting the relevance of syntactic representations and parsing with language‐like characteristics in a nonlinguistic domain. Furthermore, we find no evidence for a modulatory effect of musical training, suggesting that a general cognitive capacity, rather than explicit knowledge and strategies, may underlie the observed phenomenon in music.

Interpreting Rhythm as Parsing: Syntactic‐Processing Operations Predict the Migration of Visual Flashes as Perceived During Listening to Musical Rhythms

“…The present results also provide preliminary empirical grounding to theoretical proposals that the experience of musical structure may be understood as the result of cognitive operations algorithmically analogous to those of a parser as detailed by Jackendoff (1991). Concurrently with recent evidence showing the existence of retrospective revision in music, analogously to linguistic garden‐path effects (Cecchetti et al., 2022), the present results support a processing architecture entailing mechanisms of online incremental parsing as well as post hoc strategies to resolve ambiguity (cf. Steedman, 2000).…”

Hearing functional harmony in jazz: A perceptual study of music-theoretical accounts of extended tonality

“…Our results may thus inform theoretical and computational models attempting to formalize such implicit knowledge (e.g., Harasim et al, 2020;Rohrmeier, 2020;Steedman, 1984), as well as the human capacity to learn (Harasim, 2020) and process musical harmonic structure (Granroth-Wilding & Steedman, 2014;Harasim et al, 2018;Jackendoff, 1991). In particular, experimental evidence supports the view that listeners construe mental representations of hierarchical musical structure (Cecchetti et al, 2021;Herff et al, 2021;Koelsch et al, 2013;Leino et al, 2007;Serafine et al, 1989). In modeling such representations, the present results offer empirical support for the choice of syntactic dependencies that reflect observed harmonic relationships, as suggested, for example, in syntactic accounts of extended tonality .…”

“…Listeners may not necessarily attribute global dominant function to a certain chord at the time of its occurrence but may be willing to accept resolution toward the global tonic as marking a satisfactory harmonic closure. Only then may the chord be understood (retrospectively) as expressing functional meaning in some generalized sense which allows for retrospective reinterpretation (Cecchetti et al, 2022). In this respect, our data shed light on how establishing a global tonal context determines which of the 12 chromatic degrees of the scale, relative to the tonal center, share such (potentially revisable) functional behavior.…”

Eye Closure Interacts with Music to Influence Vividness and Content of Directed Imagery

“…Both the prior and standardization are widely used in the auditory as well as music cognition literature (Beveridge, Cano, & Herff, 2021;Cecchetti, Herff, & Rohrmeier, 2022;Herff, Dorsheimer, Dahmen, & Prince, 2022;Herff, Harasim, Cecchetti, Finkensiep, & Rohrmeier, 2021;Herff et al, 2020;MacRitchie, Breaden, Milne, & McIntyre, 2020;Smit, Dobrowohl, Schaal, Milne, & Herff, 2020;Smit, Milne, Sarvasy, & Dean, 2022). Based on the research question at hand, each model then predicted a given dependent variable (vividness, distance, time, or emotional sentiment) whilst accounting for participant and trial effects through random intercepts.…”