Pitch and Duration in Recognition of Music-Like Structures

Abstract

To determine whether patterning of pitch or duration contributes most to the recognition of melodic structures, tone sequences resembling musical patterns or melodies were used in a recognition memory task. Nine categories of pattern complexity were produced by using three different levels of average information per tone in each of the two dimensions. These categories of tone sequences were presented to groups of Ss and their recognition performance measured. Only patterning of pitch was a significant factor in recognition. Performance was better with larger values of average information per tone, but behavior at maximum values of pitch information suggested that the relationship between performance and pattern information is nonmonotonic.