Hemispheric asymmetry in the formation of musical pitch expectations: a monaural listening and probe tone study (original) (raw)
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Hemispheric asymmetry in the perception of musical pitch structure
2014
Both the left and right hemispheres contribute to the perception of pitch structure in music. Music researchers have attempted to explain the observed asymmetries in the perception of musical pitch structure by characterizing the dominant processing style of each hemisphere. However, no existing characterizations have been able to account for all of the empirical findings. To better explain existing empirical findings, this dissertation characterizes the left hemisphere as dominant in temporal pitch processing (i.e. with respect to the sequential ordering of pitches) and the right hemisphere as dominant in non-temporal pitch processing (i.e. without respect to the sequential ordering of pitches). Four listening experiments were performed utilizing the monaural listening paradigm to investigate hemispheric differences in the processing of temporal and non-temporal pitch structures. None of the experiments provided strong evidence of right hemisphere dominance for non-temporal pitch p...
Tonal Expectations Influence Early Pitch Processing
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2011
The present study investigated the ERP correlates of the influence of tonal expectations on pitch processing. Participants performed a pitch discrimination task between penultimate and final tones of melodies. These last two tones were a repetition of the same musical note, but penultimate tones were always in tune whereas final tones were slightly out of tune in half of the trials. The pitch discrimination task allowed us to investigate the influence of tonal expectations in attentive listening and, for penultimate tones, without being confounded by decisional processes (occurring on final tones). Tonal expectations were manipulated by a tone change in the first half of the melodies that changed their tonality, hence changing the tonal expectedness of penultimate and final tones without modifying them acoustically. Manipulating tonal expectations with minimal acoustic changes allowed us to focus on the cognitive expectations based on listeners' knowledge of tonal structures. Fo...
Dichotic listening to musical sequences: Relationship to hemispheric specialization of function
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Ear advantages in dichotic listening are generally held to reflect greater involvement of the hemisphere contralateral to the preferred ear. Rationales for this view rely on the assumption that, when information arriving at the two ears is treated as a single complex signal, an advantage to a component of this signal based on ear of input will not interact with an advantage based on some other attribute, such as frequency. This assumption is shown, for the case of dichotically presented melodies, to be unjustified. Dichotic tone pairs that are presented in a sequential context are more accurately perceived and localized when the higher tone is to the right and the lower to the left, than when the higher tone is to the left and the lower to the right. This anisotropy can, in principle, give rise to patterns of ear advantage which may tend in either direction, depending on factors such as type of material presented, level of difficulty, task requirement, and category of listener. Since its basis is unknown, ear advantages resulting from this anisotropy cannot be assumed to reflect greater involvement of either hemisphere in processing the information. ONSIDERABLE interest has developed concerning the involvement of the two sides of the brain in processing music. The view most commonly held is that, whereas speech is processed predominantly in the left, or dominant, hemisphere (in most right-handers), music is processed predominantly in the right, or nondominant hemisphere. Much support for this view comes from findings using the dichotic listening paradigm. This article reviews the proposed rationales for the use of this paradigm in drawing inferences concerning hemispheric specialization of function and describes a perceptual phenomenon that points to a quite different interpretation of dichotic listening results, at least where musical materials are concerned. The possibility is considered that this perceptual phenomenon could be contributing to patterns of ear advantage for speech materials also.
1985
Ear advantages in dichotic listening are generally held to reflect greater involvement of the hemisphere contralateral to the preferred ear. Rationales for this view rely on the assumption that, when information arriving at the two ears is treated as a single complex signal, an advantage to a component of this signal based on ear of input will not interact with an advantage based on some other attribute, such as frequency. This assumption is shown, for the case of dichotically presented melodies, to be unjustified. Dichotic tone pairs that are presented in a sequential context are more accurately perceived and localized when the higher tone is to the right and the lower to the left, than when the higher tone is to the left and the lower to the right. This anisotropy can, in principle, give rise to patterns of ear advantage which may tend in either direction, depending on factors such as type of material presented, level of difficulty, task requirement, and category of listener. Since its basis is unknown, ear advantages resulting from this anisotropy cannot be assumed to reflect greater involvement of either hemisphere in processing the information.
Ear Advantage for Musical Location and Relative Pitch: Effects of Musical Training and Attention
Perception, 2016
Trained musicians have been found to exhibit a right-ear advantage for high tones and a left-ear advantage for low tones. We investigated whether this right/high, left/low pattern of musical processing advantage exists in listeners who had varying levels of musical experience, and whether such a pattern might be modulated by attentional strategy. A dichotic listening paradigm was used in which different melodic sequences were presented to each ear, and listeners attended to (a) the left ear or the right ear or (b) the higher pitched tones or the lower pitched tones. Listeners judged whether tone-to-tone transitions within each melodic sequence moved upward or downward in pitch. Only musically experienced listeners could adequately judge the direction of successive pitch transitions when attending to a specific ear; however, all listeners could judge the direction of successive pitch transitions within a high-tone stream or a low-tone stream. Overall, listeners exhibited greater accuracy when attending to relatively higher pitches, but there was no evidence to support a right/high, left/low bias. Results were consistent with effects of attentional strategy rather than an ear advantage for high or low tones. Implications for a potential performer/audience paradox in listening space are considered.
Feeling Sound: Listeners' Experience of Topical Pitch Perception
Sloboda, Gayford and Minassian (2003) suggest that communication between performer(s) and audience relies on a shared bodily experience of music. We investigated one aspect of listeners' experience, topical pitch perception (TPP), and its effect on listeners' memory for pitches and chords, and perception of tonality. A total of 1063 participants undertook a survey and three listening tests on-line (Study 1); in a partial replication (Study 2), 249 participants subsequently carried out the first survey in vivo. TPP was reported by 85% of experimental group participants in Study 1 who identified the specific locations where they "felt" pitches on the body, out of 229 potential choices, and 87.5% of all participants in Study 2 who chose from a total of five locations. Low pitches were consistently felt low in the body; high pitches were felt high in the body. While there were no effects of group on memory, experimental group participants defined as TPP "feelers&q...
Brain and Language, 1980
This study examines the effect of musical experience and family handedness background on the categorization of musical intervals (two-note chords). Righthanded subjects, who were divided into four groups on the basis of musical training and presence (or absence) of left-handed family members, categorized musical intervals which were monaurally presented to left or right ear. The results, based on consistency and discreteness of categorization, showed: (1) Musicians' performance is superior to nonmusicians'; (2) musicians and nonmusicians differ significantly on their ear of preference; (3) family handedness background significantly affects ear of preference among musicians but not among nonmusicians.
A left-ear advantage for forced-choice judgements of melodic contour
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 1997
Listeners heard a sequence of five tones presented monaurally, and then made a forced-choice judgment about the sequence's contour (i.e., its pattern of upward and downward shifts in pitch between successive tones). The forced-choice method ensured that contour judgements were independent of absolute-pitch or interval cues. Performance was better for sequences presented to the left ear (right hemisphere) than it was for sequences presented to the right ear (left hemisphere). This finding provides support for claims of a right-hemisphere bias for the processing of melodic contour.
The Perception of Tonal Structure Through the Differentiation and Organization of Pitches.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: …, 2004
The role of 2 psychological processes, differentiation and organization, were examined in the perception of musical tonality. Differentiation distinguishes elements from one another and was varied in terms of the distribution of pitch durations within tone sequences. Organization establishes relations between differentiated elements and was varied in terms of either conformity with or deviation from a hierarchical description of tonality. Multiple experiments demonstrated that the perception of tonality depended on a minimal degree of differentiation in the distribution of the duration-but not frequency of occurrence-of pitches and only when pitch distributions were hierarchically organized. Moreover, the mere differentiation of the tonic from nontonic pitches was not sufficient to induce tonal percepts. These results are discussed in relation to tonal strength, musical expressiveness, and principles of auditory pattern processing.
Representation of pitch in horizontal space and its relationship to musical and instrumental experience was examined in three behavioral experiments. Each experiment investigated the influence of a task-irrelevant dimension (pitch or location) on the perception of a task-relevant dimension (location or pitch, respectively). Sine tones with nine different pitches were presented from nine locations, and participants estimated the pitch or location of the stimuli. Experiment 1 showed an influence of the (task irrelevant) pitch of presented stimuli on the perceived location of the stimuli in musically experienced participants only. This influence increased with the degree of musical training of participants. No influence was found of presented location on the perception of pitch. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the influence of instrumental expertise comparing the responses of a group of flutists with a group of pianists. An interaction with instrumental expertise was found only in Experiment 3, where participants played shortly on their respective instruments before doing the perceptual judgments. The experiments indicate that musical training in general influence the pitch-location association, and pianistic experience in particular.