A contextual constraint approach to studying melodic expectation: behavioral and neural studies
Fogel, Allison.
2019
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Melodic expectation is a perennial topic in music cognition. A
number of ERP studies of melodic expectation have been conducted, but they have so
far been limited in their approach: they have manipulated the expectancy of a
target note without investigating how the prior context contributes to forming
expectations. We have developed a new approach to studying melodic expectation
inspired by ... read morethe paradigms used in studies of sentence processing: manipulating
contextual constraint, or the extent to which a context constrains expectations to
one particular continuation. Previously, we developed the melodic cloze paradigm,
where participants were asked to sing continuations to short melodic contexts.
Using this task, it is possible to develop melodies that either do or do not lead
to a strong prediction for a certain note to come next, as well as to quantify
participants' expectations for different continuations. Here, we assessed the
reliability of the melodic cloze paradigm by replicating it with different
participants and task instructions, demonstrating that it is indeed a reliable
method for quantifying participants' expectations in melodic sequences. We then
used stimuli developed through this task to study the neural correlates of melodic
expectation using a set of novel ERP paradigms. We first explored the ERP effects
of violating predictions for a specific note with unexpected but in-key target
notes, then repeated the paradigm using out-of-key target notes. When in-key
target notes violated a prediction for a different note, they elicited a sustained
frontal positivity. Interestingly, this result resembles the frontal positivity
elicited by plausible words that violate predictions for a different word in
language experiments. In contrast, out-of-key target notes elicited a late
posterior positivity (P600) compared to expected notes. Unexpected notes did not
elicit an early anterior negativity- the effect most frequently reported by
previous ERP studies of melodic expectation- in either experiment. Finally, we
discuss additional applications of the contextual constraint approach to studying
melodic expectation, such as evaluating the accuracy of the predictions generated
by different computational models of melodic expectation.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2019.
Submitted to the Dept. of Psychology.
Advisor: Aniruddh Patel.
Committee: Gina Kuperberg, Elizabeth Race, and L. Robert Slevc.
Keywords: Cognitive psychology, and Music theory.read less - ID:
- 0p096m67r
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