Cognitive biases in information processing of valenced stimuli are a major contributor to the phenomenology of mood disorders. However, current screening tools for mood disorders rely on self-report questionnaires, which include... more
Cognitive biases in information processing of valenced stimuli are a major contributor to the phenomenology of mood disorders. However, current screening tools for mood disorders rely on self-report questionnaires, which include uncomfortably invasive questions and are confounded by socially desirable responding. Taken together, assessing information processing biases may be a promising proxy to screen non-invasively for mood disorders. Here, we report data of 60 participants that performed a continuous statistical learning task in which respondents were asked to predict the next event in a sequence of musical chords. An underlying transitional probability matrix governed the chord sequences. Each participant performed both a positive- and negative-valence block of this task, where blocks differed in the precise musical chords used. A pilot experiment established that the sequences from both blocks evoked their intended perceived valence. Furthermore, cognitive assessment (Raven’s a...
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Recognition performance for most stimuli decreases as the amount of interference between exposure and recognition increases. However, for a few select stimuli—music, poetry and line drawings—recognition performance shows little to no... more
Recognition performance for most stimuli decreases as the amount of interference between exposure and recognition increases. However, for a few select stimuli—music, poetry and line drawings—recognition performance shows little to no disruption by interference. The novel Regenerative Multiple Representations (RMR) conjecture proposes that for these select stimuli, our experience influences how they are perceived and encoded into memory. In the case of music, conformity to the compositional rules of the music that a listener is accustomed to, influences whether or not they perceive a stimulus as musical. If a stimulus is perceived as musical, the memory of this stimulus will consist of multiple memory representations which provides resistance to the cumulative disruptive effects of interference. The present study aims to get closer to the precise mechanisms that drive this resilience. In order to do this, we used melodies that conform to fewer compositional rules of Western music com...
The perceived similarity of cross-modally presented contours was investigated with two experiments. The combination of surface correlation and Fourier analysis techniques allows quantitative descriptions of both global and local contour... more
The perceived similarity of cross-modally presented contours was investigated with two experiments. The combination of surface correlation and Fourier analysis techniques allows quantitative descriptions of both global and local contour information. Experiment 1 investigated auditory–visual similarity by presenting a tonal melody followed by a line drawing and asking participants to rate the similarity between the two. Both stimuli were coded as integer series representing pitch or vertical height, respectively. Ratings were predicted by the surface correlation between the melody and the drawing (the correlation of the two integer series). Experiment 2 reversed the order of presentation by presenting the drawing first, followed by the melody. Surface correlation again predicted similarity ratings, in addition to amplitude and phase components derived from a Fourier analysis model. These results validate the Fourier analysis model of contour cross-modally, particularly when participa...
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Testing creativity in tertiary learning activities is a young field of research, and current assessment methods are difficult to apply within the diverse context of media production education, where disciplines range from journalism... more
Testing creativity in tertiary learning activities is a young field of research, and current assessment methods are difficult to apply within the diverse context of media production education, where disciplines range from journalism through to video game production. However, the concept of remix is common across this wide range of media, and offers practitioners ‘endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique and the like’ (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008, p. 22). The conceptual commonality of remix indicates that the study conclusions will have useful implications across a range of media production disciplines. This study aims to consider new methods for testing creativity in media production learning activities and to provide better assessments for learning design. This study focused upon a learner cohort of music technology students that were undertaking a work-integrated learning programme with a record label. To make the students more work-ready and inspire greater crea...
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Despite the empirical evidence for the power of the cognitive capacity of implicit learning of structures and regularities in several modalities and materials, it remains controversial whether implicit learning extends to the learning of... more
Despite the empirical evidence for the power of the cognitive capacity of implicit learning of structures and regularities in several modalities and materials, it remains controversial whether implicit learning extends to the learning of temporal structures and regularities. We investigated whether (a) an artificial grammar can be learned equally well when expressed in duration sequences as when expressed in pitch sequences, (b) learning of the artificial grammar in either duration or pitch (as the primary dimension) sequences can be influenced by the properties of the secondary dimension (invariant vs. randomized), and (c) learning can be boosted when the artificial grammar is expressed in both pitch and duration. After an exposure phase with grammatical sequences, learning in a subsequent test phase was assessed in a grammaticality judgment task. Participants in both the pitch and duration conditions showed incidental (not fully implicit) learning of the artificial grammar when th...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Music, Cognition, and 6 moreMedicine, Learning, TIME, Grammar, Pitch, and Time
How do pitch and duration accents combine to influence the perceived grouping of musical sequences? Sequence context influences the relative importance of these accents; for example, the presence of learned structure in pitch exaggerates... more
How do pitch and duration accents combine to influence the perceived grouping of musical sequences? Sequence context influences the relative importance of these accents; for example, the presence of learned structure in pitch exaggerates the effect of pitch accents at the expense of duration accents despite being irrelevant to the task and not attributable to attention (Prince, 2014b). In the current study, two experiments examined whether the presence of temporal structure has the opposite effect. Experiment 1 tested baseline conditions, in which participants (N = 30) heard sequences with various sizes of either pitch or duration accents, which implied either duple or triple groupings (accent every two or three notes, respectively). Sequences either had regular temporal structure (isochronous) or not (irregular, via using random interonset intervals). Regularity enhanced the effect of duration accents but had negligible influence on pitch accents. The accent sizes that gave the mos...
Research Interests: Psychology and Medicine
I report two experiments on the contribution of pitch and temporal cues to metrical grouping. Recent work on this question has revealed a dominance of pitch. Extending this work, a dimensional salience hypothesis predicts that the... more
I report two experiments on the contribution of pitch and temporal cues to metrical grouping. Recent work on this question has revealed a dominance of pitch. Extending this work, a dimensional salience hypothesis predicts that the presence of tonality would influence the relative importance of pitch and time. Experiment 1 establishes baseline values of accents in pitch (pitch leaps) and time (duration accent) that result in equally strong percepts of metrical grouping. Pitch and temporal accents are recombined in Experiment 2 to see which dimension contributes more strongly to metrical grouping (and how). Both experiments test values in tonal and atonal contexts. Both dimensions had strong influences on perceived metric grouping, but pitch was clearly the more dominant. Furthermore, the relative strength of the two dimensions varied based on the tonality of the sequences. Pitch contributed more strongly in the tonal contexts than the atonal, whereas Time was stronger in the atonal c...
Research Interests: Psychology, Music, Attention, Time Perception, Medicine, and 7 moreTIME, Humans, Pitch Perception, Adult, Pitch, Time, and Psychomotor Performance
Circular tones are artificial complex tones typically comprised of several octave-spaced frequencies. By definition, all frequency components of octave-spaced circular tones belong to the same pitch class. The relative intensity of the... more
Circular tones are artificial complex tones typically comprised of several octave-spaced frequencies. By definition, all frequency components of octave-spaced circular tones belong to the same pitch class. The relative intensity of the octave-spaced partials in a ..
Tonality, or musical key, is the central organizational principle of pitch in common-practice Western music. It provides a hierarchical arrangement of the 12 pitch classes per octave, such that individual pitch classes vary in their... more
Tonality, or musical key, is the central organizational principle of pitch in common-practice Western music. It provides a hierarchical arrangement of the 12 pitch classes per octave, such that individual pitch classes vary in their stability, both in a music-theoretical and ..
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A central aim of cognitive psychology is to explain how we integrate stimulus dimensions into a unified percept, but how the dimensions of pitch and time combine in the perception of music remains a largely unresolved issue. The goal of... more
A central aim of cognitive psychology is to explain how we integrate stimulus dimensions into a unified percept, but how the dimensions of pitch and time combine in the perception of music remains a largely unresolved issue. The goal of this study was to test the effect of varying the degree of conformity to dimensional structure in pitch and time (specifically, tonality and metre) on goodness ratings and classifications of melodies. The pitches and durations of melodies were either presented in their original order, as a reordered sequence, or replaced with random elements. Musically trained and untrained participants (24 each) rated melodic goodness, attending selectively to the dimensions of pitch, time, or both. Also, 24 trained participants classified whether or not the melodies were tonal, metric, or both. Pitch and temporal manipulations always influenced responses, but participants successfully emphasized either dimension in accordance with instructions. Effects of pitch and...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Music, Selective Attention, and 14 morePsychoacoustics, Attention, Time Perception, Adolescent, Medicine, Humans, Effect size, Female, Male, Reaction Time, Young Adult, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Acoustic Stimulation, and Pitch discrimination
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.'Prince, JB, Thompson, WF, & Schmuckler, MA (2009). Pitch and time, tonality and meter: How do musical dimensions combine? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and P...more
In typical Western music, pitch often dominates time, perhaps because pitch exhibits more structure. This research tested how varying the amount of structure in these two dimensions affects how pitch and time combine in judgments of... more
In typical Western music, pitch often dominates time, perhaps because pitch exhibits more structure. This research tested how varying the amount of structure in these two dimensions affects how pitch and time combine in judgments of melodic goodness. Melodies had either the original sequence of elements, a reordered sequence of existing elements, or a sequence with random elements. This manipulation was used for both dimensions independently, creating a crossed 3 pitch by 3 time conditions design. Participants were instructed to attend only to pitch, time, or both. Despite the selective attention instructions, both dimensions always contributed to goodness ratings. The effect size of pitch was considerably larger than that of time in all cases except for the attend time instruction, in which the main effects were of equal size. The pattern of how pitch and time contributed to ratings differed across instruction. Pitch and time combined independently only when attending time. When attending pitch, the effect of time declined with reduced pitch structure. When attending both pitch and time, the original pitch and time sequence was disproportionately better than other conditions. These results have four implications. First, pitch dominates melodic goodness ratings regardless of the degree of temporal structure. Second, listeners can consciously emphasize either dimension in this context, suggesting some independence between pitch and time on an explicit level. Third, however, listeners cannot ignore entirely either dimension when forming a goodness rating, suggesting some interdependence between pitch and time on an implicit level. Fourth, when attending to both pitch and time simultaneously, the unique combination of the original pitch and temporal elements can affect goodness ratings in an interactive manner. Overall, the combination of pitch and time in music can vary in complex ways based on conscious and involuntary allocation of attention to these two dimensions.
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In a continuous recognition paradigm, most stimuli elicit superior recognition performance when the item to be recognised is the most recent stimulus (a recency-in-memory effect). Furthermore, increasing the number of intervening items... more
In a continuous recognition paradigm, most stimuli elicit superior recognition performance when the item to be recognised is the most recent stimulus (a recency-in-memory effect). Furthermore, increasing the number of intervening items cumulatively disrupts memory in most domains. Memory for melodies composed in familiar tuning systems also shows superior recognition for the most recent melody, but no disruptive effects from the number of intervening melodies. A possible explanation has been offered in a novel regenerative multiple representations (RMR) conjecture. The RMR assumes that prior knowledge informs perception and perception influences memory representations. It postulates that melodies are perceived, thus also represented, simultaneously as integrated entities and also their components (such as pitches, pitch intervals, short phrases, and rhythm). Multiple representations of the melody components and melody as a whole can restore one another, thus providing resilience aga...
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We investigated how the surface and structural information of pitch and time in melodies contribute to the perceived expectancy of melodic segments. The contour (pitch surface), tonality (pitch structure), rhythm (time surface) and metre... more
We investigated how the surface and structural information of pitch and time in melodies contribute to the perceived expectancy of melodic segments. The contour (pitch surface), tonality (pitch structure), rhythm (time surface) and metre (time structure) were preserved or altered in factorial fashion, either for the full length of a melody (Full condition) or only its last phrase (Last condition). Participants (N = 24) with a range of musical training received instructions to rate how expected the second portion of a melody was, having heard its first part. Additionally, instructions varied across blocks to attend selectively to pitch, time, or both. Expectancy ratings for the Last condition were lower than for the Full condition, indicating that ratings truly reflected expectancy (rather than overall goodness, which would predict the opposite). Interestingly, tonality and rhythm contributed to global expectancy ratings, but not contour or metre. Furthermore, listeners were unable to ignore entirely either dimension, but successfully attenuated their influence in accordance with instructions. These findings offer a unique insight into music perception by testing expectancies of melody segments (beyond single-note continuations), factorially varying both the surface and structure of pitch and time, and using a selective attention manipulation.