Scale-sensitivity: A cognitive resource basic to music perception

Abstract

A tone-scramble is a rapid, randomly ordered sequence of pure tones.

Many listeners cannot discriminate major vs minor tone-scrambles regardless of presentation rate

“…On average, trained musicians have higher scalesensitivity than non-musicians. In particular, both Chubb et al (2013) and Dean and Chubb (2017) observed fairly strong correlations between years of musical training and performance in the tone-scramble task. However, a plausible hypothesis is that these correlations are driven primarily by a self-selection bias: listeners with high levels of scalesensitivity tend to seek out musical training whereas listeners with low levels of scale-sensitivity do not.…”

“…In each of Chubb et al (2013) and Dean and Chubb (2017), the positive correlation between years of musical training and scalesensitivity was driven primarily by a large group of listeners with no musical training who had very little scale-sensitivity as well as a smaller group with many years of musical training who had high scale-sensitivity. Strikingly, however, Chubb et al (2013) and Dean and Chubb (2017) also observed moderate numbers of listeners with many years of musical training with little or no scale-sensitivity as well as other listeners with little or no musical training who had high scale-sensitivity, suggesting that musical training is neither necessary nor sufficient to attain high levels of scalesensitivity. It should be noted, however, that in the study of Dean and Chubb (2017), the highest levels of scale-sensitivity were achieved only by listeners with at least four years of musical training.…”

“…These results make it clear that high-performers possess auditory processing capabilities that low-performers do not. Dean and Chubb (2017) explored the nature of these processing capabilities. Specifically, they tested listeners in five tasks similar to the major-vs-minor tone-scramble task used by Chubb et al (2013).…”

“…Specifically, they tested listeners in five tasks similar to the major-vs-minor tone-scramble task used by Chubb et al (2013). In each task, the stimuli were tonescrambles that contained 32, randomly sequenced, 65 ms tones; like the tone-scrambles used by Chubb et al (2013), all of the stimuli of Dean and Chubb (2017) contained eight each of the notes G 5 , D 6 , and G 6 (to establish G as the tonic center of every stimulus in all conditions). In addition, each stimulus contained eight identical target notes.…”

“…In each of these tasks, one target note belongs to both the major and minor scales, and the other target note belongs to neither scale. Dean and Chubb (2017) concluded that the resource R implicated by the study of Chubb et al (2013) is not specific to the difference between the major vs minor scales; rather, they proposed that R confers sensitivity more generally to the spectrum of qualities that music can achieve by creating a scale through establishing a tonic and selecting a subset of notes relative to that tonic. Accordingly, Dean and Chubb (2017) called R "scalesensitivity.…”