Deliège_Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Memory

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW

Editor in chief Nigal Osborne Music and the Cognitive Sciences 1990

Issue Editors Ian Cross and Irne Delige

Volume 9 Proceedings of Cambridge Conference on Music and the Cognitive Sciences, 1990

harwood academic publishers Published in Switzerland

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW

Editor in Chief Nigel Osborne (UK)

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Contents

Introduction: Cognitive science and musican overview Ian CROSS and Irne DELIGE 1

Music in Culture

An interactive experimental method for the determination of musical scales in oral cultures: Application to the vocal music of the Aka Pygmies of Central Africa Simha AROM and Susanne FRNISS

7

An interactive experimental method for the determination of musical scales in oral cultures: xylophone music of Central Africa Vincent DEHOUX and Frdric VOISIN

14

The influence of the tambura drone on the perception of proximity among scale types in North Indian classical music Kathryn VAUGHN

21

Constraints on Music CognitionPsychoacoustical

Pitch properties of chords of octave-spaced tones Richard PARNCUTT 37

Identification and blend of timbres as a basis for orchestration Roger A.KENDALL and Edward C.CARTERETTE 55

What is the octave of a harmonically rich note? Roy D.PATTERSON, Robert MILROY and Michael ALLERHAND 75

Brightness and octave position: are changes in spectral envelope and in tone height perceptually equivalent? Ken ROBINSON

89

Constraints on Music CognitionNeural

A cognitive neuropsychological analysis of melody recall David W.PERRY 102

Split-brain studies of music perception and cognition Mark Jude TRAMO 119

Musical Structure in Cognition

The influence of implicit harmony, rhythm and musical training on the abstraction of tension-relaxation schemas in tonal musical phrases Emmanuel BIGAND

132

Is the perception of melody governed by motivic arguments or by generative rules or by both? Archie LEVEY

150

Transformation, migration and restoration: shades of illusion in the perception of music Zofia KAMINSKA and Peter MAYER

163

Associationism and musical soundtrack phenomena Annabel J.COHEN 175

Rhythm perception: interactions between time and intensity Claire GERARD, Carolyn DRAKE and Marie-Claire BOTTE 192

Mechanisms of cue extraction in memory for musical time Irne DELIEGE 204

Generativity, mimesis and the human body in music performance Eric F.CLARKE 221

Representations of Musical Structure

Issues on the representation of time and structure in music Henkjan HONING 235

A connectionist and a traditional AI quantizer, symbolic versus sub-symbolic models of rhythm perception Peter DESAIN

254

Computer perception of phrase structure Robert ERASER 274

Critical study of Sundbergs rules for expression in the performance of melodies Peter van OOSTEN 287

Contribution to the design of an expert system for the generation of tonal multiple counterpoint Agostino di SCIPIO

296

Computer-aided comparison of syntax systems in three piano pieces by Debussy David MEREDITH 307

General Issues in Cognitive Musicology

A semiotic approach to music Nicolas MEEUS

305

Psychological analysis of musical composition: composition as design Ron ROOZENDAAL 329

How do we perceive atonal music? Suggestions for a theoretical approach Michel IMBERTY 336

Index 353

Mechanisms of cue extraction in memory for musical time

Irne Delige

Unit de Recherche en Psychologie de la Musique, Universit de Lige, Belgium

Contemporary Music Review, 1993, Vol. 9, Parts 1 & 2, pp. 191205 Photocopying permitted by license only

1993 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH Printed in Malaysia

Starting from the hypothesis explored in previous research, that there exists a mechanism for cue extraction in the organisation of listening to a musical work, the incidence of the mechanism in memory for temporal form will be studied. The experiment, conducted using a contemporary workEclatby Pierre Boulezconsisted of the localisation of extracts after three hearings of the work during which subjects carried out grouping tasks made necessary by a previous study. In the comparison of the results of professional musicians and non-musicians, we observe that the latter retain a smaller number of cues whilst listening, and are less sensitive to their tonal qualities. Moreover, whilst the realisation of the temporal line (ligne temporelle) of the work by musicians corresponds to its actual duration, it is noticeably more centred by non-experts.

KEY WORDS: Cue, group, grouping, variant, invariant, time memory.

The first Music and Cognitive Science symposium which took place in Paris in 1988 was, for me, a chance to introduce the subject of some work in progress on The psychological organisation of listening to music. There an overview of three experimental studies centred around the hypothesis of the existence of a mechanism for cue extraction in the construction of a schema of the work was presented. This first phase of the work took into account the role of so called cues in the formation of groupings of groups leading to the capture of an overall mapping of the work during its perception in real time. Pieces from contemporary musical repertoire the Sequenza VI for alto solo by Luciano Berio, and Eclat by Pierre Boulez (I.Delige, 1989, I.Delige et al., 1990)

Contemporary music review 204

were chosen for the experiments. Quite a strong similarity between the performance of professional musicians and non-musicians was observed.

The following experiment is concerned with the schema of the work memorised whilst listening and performing a localisation judgement task for extracts consisting of complete and well formed groups. Nevertheless, what is investigated here is not the effect of the grouping itself as an entity, nor the perception of its boundaries, but that of the cue which it embodies, and which serves as a label for memory for the temporal succession of musical events. It should be made clear that the localisation judgement task was introduced at the end of the experiment discussed above which was concerned with the perception of groupings of groups during the hearing in real time of Eclat for fifteen instruments by Pierre Boulez. Thus the subjects had heard the piece three times before undertaking the localisa-tion of extracts task. They had not been told about this task beforehand. The research aims to separate out the effect of the cue in remembering the schema of the work, i.e. the foundation markers laid by the cues whilst listening with no other preparation. We endeavoured therefore to create experimental conditions which avoided the interference of any other indicators.

It is not unhelpful here to re-emphasize that to a large extent, cue extraction brings into play the notions of invariant and variant in musical perception, notions which we know to be widely exploited in composition and analysis. The invariant function is inherent in the very nature of the cue. As soon as it has been identified this invariant takes its true form. It is a relatively stable entity, something made discrete. It could be said, to take up an expression of Leonard Meyer, that it has become a palpable object (1973, p. 90).

However, the notion of invariant, transposed into the framework of cue extraction in listening to music, is slightly distanced from the exclusively thematic nature which is traditionally assigned to it. This had already been noted during the analysis of the formation of groupings of groups just mentioned (Delige ibid.). In fact, even if a thematic quality of the cues detected was perceived in the results obtained for Sequenza VI by Berio, the extracts certainly did not have characteristics comparable to those evident when listening to Eclat by Boulez. However, the similarity of the groupings recorded for such different works was blatant, and it was from here that the idea of a listening procedure with the same underlying mechanism came. In other words, in both cases, it was plausible to postulate the operation of cue extraction, the nature and auditory characteristics of these cues being dictated by other structural characteristics of the composition. In this case it was a question of combinations of pitches and timbres. Certain invariants could be detected in the frequent use of trills and resonating sounds, or even isolated sounds bounded by groups of rapidly flowing sounds.

Hence a cue always contains rare, but striking characteristics which facilitate recall. It has a role as a place marker, a simple and efficient wayas Ribot, one of the great masters of European psychology pointed out about a century ago nowof treating large quantities of data. The cues allow the discrimination of resemblances and differences. Thus they appear to be figures around which a musical process is constructed and progresses. It might be sufficient at this point to employ the old saying Birds of a feather flock together to give a good idea of the process to which the cue gives rise during listening. Regrouping of structures by similarity operates as long as they have the same fundamental invariants. It ends as soon as a new contrasting element is introduced, and

Mechanisms of cue extraction in memory for musical time 205

reappears as soon as new cue indicators are available. It takes effect in the setting up of a Same-Different principle which leads to the definition of temporal regions in the flow of the work.

We could ask if the cue would by its very nature preserve the memory of the temporal organisation of the work, or at least facilitate it. To ask the question in such a way is to come back to the idea formulated in terms of a temporal horizon by numerous authors who have considered the question of time perception, (Janet, 1928; Fraisse, 1967; Cottle, 1976; Richelle & Lejeune, 1979; Michon, 1979). However, it is exclusively the retrospective aspectthat of memory for musical events which will be considered here. It is very much a question of a retrospective process rather than a prospective process, in the sense understood by Husserl (19281964), to the extent that only the stores tapped into by listening will be accounted for. This retrospective aspect distinguishes this type of memory from the current concept of the temporal horizon which, originally considered to be a product of memory, generally integrates three temporal concepts: past, present and future (Fraisse, 1967, p. 161; Lejeune, 1984).

The process of retention during listening to music ought to be distinguished from one which contains a finite boundary or horizon, whilst at the same time it preserves the symbolic character of this concept with reference to space that is captured by all authors, and also found in Husserl. Retention is in fact seen by this author as degraded, starting from the immediate past, and is compared to an object in space whose dimension appears to diminish gradually as we move away from it. (In C.Delige 1989, p. 172). In the end, we could perhaps suggest the idea of a temporal line capable of symbolising the whole extent of the work in memory: the specific events, labelled by cues which set them up for their storage and recall, being progressively set down along it during listening.

No doubt such formulae only have a metaphorical value. Nevertheless, the relationship with space, in music, is very immediate and contemporary, not least for things relating to time. Even our representation of time, our configuration of time, is in spatial form, writes Guyau (1980, p. 70) about the relationship between time and memory. And elsewhere we can still read that: Time (objectively) brings about necessary changes in space that we represent, sometimes by infinite lines, sometimes by fixed lines (periods). (ibid., 48). Applied to the representation of the flow of the musical work, the idea of a line could well just be a way of actively taking up a common symbol which has an ordinary role in our everyday lives. It could be suggested that the concept one which underliesand may even be unconscious in authors, when we consider how well incorporated the idea has becomeImbertys dynamic vectors which take the weight of the structures during listening (1981, Chs. 3 & 4); in Fraisse when he writes: The temporal perspectives born out of past and future experiences can only be made the object of a representation if we place the events side by side1 in relation to one another. This is a natural transcription, because temporal order often coincides with spatial order. (1967, p. 302); or again in a composer like Xenakis (1956/71) speaking of duration in an examination of the different components of sound: Time is considered to be a straight line on which it is a question of marking points corresponding to variations of the components. (p. 10).

Understood in its immediate sense, the notion of line is no doubt most directly adaptable to the representation of certain types of music, from certain periods, notably when the melodic element is prevalent. To represent the succession of musical events in


memory necessarily implies the inclusion of many other parameters. Hence the temporal localisation, as envisaged in this paper, in the context of a work like Boulez Eclat, assumes that the notion will be perceived in its broadest sense: it is more a case of situating sonorous regions in proximity to one another, ordering themselvesas Fraisse said when talking about the concept of temporal horizonaccording to a plan of their succession and achieving the laying down of temporal perspectives analogue to the spatial perspectives.2

There are few empirical data which pertain to memory and the localisation of musical events in the context of works of a significant length. Moreover, the investigation of the temporal component of music is more often restricted to aspects of rhythmic or metrical order within a piece whose length has been voluntarily limited. Recently, Halpern (1988) addressed the problem of the localisation of pitch events within the whole time course of a song, based on an ensemble of well known songs which subjects had to memorise, but which they did not hear in real time. It appears that the decision times of the subjects are longest when the items to be detected are further from one another in time, as they are when the items are situated far away from one another in the song. The goals of this study were certainly not comparable to those of the present research, but a parallel can justifiably be drawn to the extent that similar mental operations, which Clarke and Krumhansl define in terms of a re-run strategy (1990, p. 218), appear to have been employed to execute the tasks in both experiments. In other words, the subjects perform a sweep, a sort of scan of the temporal horizon, which consolidates the material in order to detect the correct region before responding. Contrary to Clarke and Krumhansl, who estimate that such observations have no element which can be applied to material of a greater length, it can be imagined that if the cue is the markersufficiently clear by naturewhich is postulated here, it can mark regions, generating by its repetitions a sensation of a measure of time past and of the space occupied by figures featuring in the architecture of the work.

The experimental material

Fifteen extracts were selected in the work by a precise division carried out from recording on magnetic tape. They were defined in such a way as to present complete groups corresponding to the well-formedness and preference rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983, Ch. 3). These extracts were distributed throughout the greater part of the works duration. They include a variety of local cues, but were not selected according to the groupings perceived by the subjects, as these were not known when the materials were set up. The analysis of the data from this experiment revealed that the subjects had divided the work up into five sections. The fifteen extracts are distributed throughout them as follows:

Extract 1beginning of the workis situated in the first section which comes to a close at 115

Extracts 2 to 8 are situated in the second section (between 115 and 450). Extracts 9 to 11 are situated in the third section (between 450 and 716. Extract 12 is situated in the fourth section (between 716 and 850). Extracts 13 and 14 are situated in the fifth section and extract 15 concludes the piece.


The cue markers characterising the extracts are shown below with reference to the figures on the score, summarizing the sonorous elements likely to have constituted the cues:3

extract 1: rapid piano figure followed by a long resonance and a chord in the wind instruments, ending in a trill, (score nr 1).

extract 2: characterised by harp sonorities with a regular beat and a strong contrast in tempo compared with the structures of the preceding piano solo, (score nr 3).

extract 3: groups of trilled harmonics followed by a sub-group, (score nr 4). extract 4: contrast between groups of rapid sounds at the beginning and at the end of the

extract which bound isolated sounds in the centre, (score nr 6). extract 5: brief group followed by resonances, (score nr 6). extract 6: group of trills ending on trills and appogiaturas. (score nr 7). extract 7: two ascending figures with various instruments, interrupted in the middle by

some piano sounds, (score nr 8). extract 8: long resonances of glockenspiel and bells onto which rapid figures of

cimbalom, guitar and harp are grafted, followed by vibraphone, celeste and piano, (beginning score nr 9).

extract 9: isolated dry sounds, repetition of bells and resonances, (score nr 14). extract 10: piano solo in a low register, (score nr 16). extract 11: follows on from previous extract: similar tempo, but addition of new

timbres, (score nr 17). extract 12: trill in an augmented forte chord, ending with a small group on the piano in

the bass (end score nr 24). extract 13: return of the wind instruments on a piano chord followed by a long pause,

ending in a staccato forte group on several instruments, (score nr 25 & 26). extract 14: structures with a fairly metrical character having simultaneous onsets and

giving a clear impression of verticality. (beginning score nr 27). extract 15: end of the work: isolated groups with orchestral tutti; piano presence,

prolonged sonority and long resonance. Some ambient sounds in the room can be detected.

In summary, the different extracts can be regrouped into five categories as follows, according to the dominant cue they possess:

AExtracts 1 & 15 with which 9, 10 & 13 are associated; BExtracts 2, 9 & 14; CExtracts 3, 6 & 12; DExtracts 4 & 7; EExtracts 5 & 8:

As this dominant cue is not exclusive, other more hidden aspects may suggest links between the categories of extracts.

Further considerations

The groupings of groups determined in the task which had preceded the present experiment resulted in a very similar schema in all subjects irrespective of their level of


musical training, (cf. I.Delige, 1989). We might in the first instance expect that memory for this schema, the topic of the following investigation, might result in the same order of similarity. However, such reasoning could prove hasty. In fact the identity of perceived groupings in real time does not necessarily mean the same thing as the identity of mnemonic processing. The formation of the groupings does not necessarily inform us about the perceived meaning, in other words about the internal substance which has been processed mentally on hearing the groupings. In order to replicate a comparable similarity in the results, it would have to be postulated that the musicians and the non-musicians had registered the events in the same way, and with equivalent pertinence, which hardly seems likely. Consequently, given the large difference in musical competence between the two samples, we would expect performance by experts to be more accurate.

Moreover, the perception of the schema of the work in real time provides little information as to whether the musicans and the non-musicians produce their groupings out of an equally rich pool of cues. It is, in fact, perfectly plausible that similar groupings are perceived by non-musicians, but from a smaller collection of cues. A similar theory has already been advanced with regard to the less accurate performance by non-musicians in another experiment which also pertains to the incidence of cue extraction in the memorised schema (I.Delige, 1989, Expt. 3). The subjects were asked to reclassify short extracts (5 to 20) as a function of the six sections of Sequenza VI by Berio, but here the coordinates of the schema were explicitly referred to in the instructions, as well as during the hearings which preceded the task. Consequently, in an attempt to bring the question closer to the relative quantity of cues gathered, the extracts to be localised in this new test were expressly chosen to be of a more variable length (735 seconds), which ought to allow us to observe whether the length of the extract, i.e. a varying density of information, influences the precision of the localisation positively or negatively. In addition, conjointly with the particular cues that they possess, an overall primacy and/or recency effect, well known in memory data (Murdock, 1962) ought, for the results specific to extracts 115 offer supplementary information for the study of memory for cues and for the perceived temporal schema.

Finally, this experiment will also be an opportunity for a new approach to the phenomenon of the imprint. We should remember that the imprint is a sort of prototypical figure, resulting from the reiteration of the same type of invariant. It is, in fact, difficult to postulate that the particular characteristics of a group of presented structures could all be memorised. On the contrary, a summary is filtered in memory which retains the principle coordinates (I.Delige, 1987, 1989). In other words, the imprint relieves the memory of details, but in so doing reduces its efficacy in favour of a more restricted data base. A certain haziness in performance can result, which, if the phenomenon is verified, should be seen principally in less precise localisations when the extracts belong to a temporal region perceived as being part of a same section in the mental schema of the work, (see above), i.e. for extracts coming from a grouping which is defined mentally as being constructed around a certain type of invariant structure, in the same way as was the case in the experiment just referred to, we should observe that the use of similar cues at points which are temporally spaced out in the work, leads to confusion in the localisation judgements.


Method

Subjects This experiment required 32 subjects, 16 of which were accomplished musicians familiar with the contemporary repertoire, and 16 non-musicians.

Procedure and materials It should be noted that the subjects carried out this test immediately after the experiment about the perception of groupings, for which they had heard the work three times from the beginning to end. They had not been forewarned to avoid the use of a premeditative strategy for remembering.

The response sheets were marked with a horizontal line 22.5cm long divided into 15 boxes of 1.5cm representing the total length of the work and the possible location points of the extracts to be numbered from 1 to 15. The subjects were not obliged to fill in all the boxes. The instructions allowed the subjects the opportunity of marking extracts between others already localised on the line so that responses were not limited by preceding ones.

The extracts to be localised were recorded on magnetic tape and played in a different random order for each subject. Each subject was tested individually.

Results and comments

1. Overall examination of the data

a) Mean serial positioning and perceived duration of the work by the subjects Table 1 shows, in ascending order, the mean positions of the 15 extracts for each category of subjects. It can be seen that the non-musicians have a noticeably more centred view of the overall length of the work. On a scale representing length in time ranging from 115 the musicians showed an average length spreading between 1.7 and 14.7, a length approximately equivalent to that of the work itself, whereas the non-musicians limited this spread to between 6 and 12.1. However, if we look at the relationship which exists between the actual position of the extract in the work and the mean position attributed by subjects, we observe a mean level which is statistically very significant both for the musicians (.91; n=15; p

6 6,2 9 6,5

3 6,3 4 7,2

4 7,2 10 7,5

9 7,3 2 7,8

5 7,7 5 7,9

10 8,5 3 8,1

7 9,3 7 8,9

8 9,5 8 8,9

11 9,9 11 9,3

12 10,5 12 9,4

13 10,7 13 10,7

14 13,3 15 11,3

15 14,7 14 12,1

b) Influence of the duration of the extract on the precision of the localisation judgements The extracts were divided into two groups according to the variable extract duration and based on a mean duration of 1935 (median=20). Group 1 (short extracts) consisted of the extracts whose duration was less than the mean duration and group 2 (long extracts) consisted of extracts whose duration was greater than the mean. From table 2 we can see that the average deviation between the actual location and the location judgement diminishes for the long extracts. At the same time, this effect is more marked for the musicians who show a difference of more than a minutes benefit in precision of localisation for the long extracts, whereas this difference is only fifteen seconds for non-musicians. An analysis of variance as a function of the absolute value of the deviation between the actual location and the average location attributed by the subjects (cf table 2), and the duration of the extract as defined by the distribution described above (short vs. long extracts) shows that this factor has no statistical significance for the non-musicians (F[1,13] =.46; p=5.1). The musicians however benefit significantly from the supply of greater temporal information. [F(1,13)=5.57; p=0.035].

Table 2 In relation to the mean duration of the extracts (1935), the table shows the mean displacement between the localisation judgments and the actual position of short extracts (1935), for musicians and non-musicians respectively.

short extracts long extracts Musicians 233 123


non-musicians 311 256

c) Correct localisations as a function of the perceived sections of the piece Figure 1 regroups the correct responses with respect to the 5 sections defined by the subjects in the experiment preceding the localisation of extracts. It can be observed that the musicians recognise the initial extract of the work remarkably well (section 1). Their percentage of correct localisations is also higher for the final section, which reflects a primacy and recency effect, as observed in the recall curves for serial position in a list of words.

Figure 1 BoulezEclat: % of correct responses by section. Order of the sections x % of correct responses by section.

The non-musicians didnt memorise the initial extract of the work quite so well globally speaking. The overall view shows that their localisation judgements are better for section 2. Hence the existence of a recency and a primacy effect doesnt seem to appear in such a striking way. It nevertheless appears in some individual subjects when the data for this test are analysed differentially, (see point 2 below)

d) Perceived proximity of the extracts as a function of the memorised schema Figures 2a & b give an idea of the way in which the extracts appear to be organised according to a criterion of proximity relative to the sections defined in the subjectss mental representation during the hearing of the work.


Figure 2a Boulez, Eclat: Perceived proximity of the extracts by musicians.

Figure 2b Boulez, Eclat: Perceived proximity of extracts by non-musicians.

For this approach, by a method of hierarchical partitioning known as clustering ie the regrouping of extracts in terms of perceived proximity represented graphically in the form of branching trees, the five sections are shown by 5 equidistant points in euclidian space in 4 dimensions. Each extract is also represented by a point in this 4 dimensional space. In order to do this, each section is shown as having a weight attributed to it


corresponding to the number of references which have been made to it. The extract is represented by the centre of gravity of the 5 points showing the sections, taking into account their weight. Proceeding in this manner, an extract which has been located by all subjects in the same section would be represented by the same point as the section itself. The representation of the extracts allows us to use the euclidian distance as a measure distance at a measure distance. At each stage the 2 extracts (or clusters) which are grouped together are replaced by their centre of gravity.

The musicians results arrange the extracts quite well in proximity to one another their schema of proximities, but extract 12 (the only extract from section 4) is as a function of the sections determined during hearing. Outside the tree we can see extracts 1 and 12, alone representing sections 1 and 4 respectively and appearing in isolation, and extracts 13, 14 and 15, all coming out of the last section, grouped together. The non-musicians also detach the initial and final sections of the work in mixed up with the extracts from sections 2 & 3 which are grouped together by all subjects in an equivalent manner in the centre of the tree: this effect is the result of the formation of an imprint which creates a sort of equivalence between characteristics encountered within a grouping which leads to localisation judgements which are relatively less precise when several extracts occur in the same section of the piece.

e) Curve/graph of localisation in relation to their actual positions In parallel to the propositions already put forward, it may not be superfluous to give a

further illustration of how close the performance of the subjects for the central sections (2 & 3) of the piece is.

We can in fact note (figure 3) that the curve of mean localisation of extracts as a function of their actual position in the work takes a distinct line for the musicians for the beginning and end of the work. For the localisations of the central extracts however, the curves take a similar line for all subjects.


Figure 3 Boulez, Eclat: Mean localisation judgement of extracts. Actual location of extracts x perceived location of extracts.

2) Differential examination of the data

a) Mode and mean localisations of the extracts A relative variability of performance was noted in the data collected during the course of this task. Table 3 presents the extracts in their normal order of occurrence in the piece, i.e. 1 to 15, and shows 1) the principal mode, i.e. the localisation most frequently chosen by all subjects from each category separately (the other numbers in the mode column are secondary modes in cases where the localisations have been rather inconsistent); 2) the mean position of the extract; 3) the calculated mean distance of the extract from its actual position. As has already been pointed out, the localisations are more dispersed for the extracts in the middle sections of the piece, but as predicted by the hypotheses, this effect is more pronounced for the non-musicians than for the musicians. The recency effect is clearer for the musicians, but is also evident in the responses of a few non-musicians who can be distinguished by a level of response particularly suited to the question at hand, as will be noted below.

Table 3 This table shows the extracts in the order in which they appear in the piece. For each category


of subjects it gives the mode,1 the mean localisation judgement observed and the displacement of this from the actual position.

MUSICIANS NON-MUSICIANS

Extract mode mean displacement mode mean displacement

1 1 1,7 +0,7 1 6 +5

2 2/5 5,1 +3,1 2/12 7,8 +5,8

3 6/4 (*) 6,3 +3,3 11/125 (*) 8,1 +5,1

4 5/29 (*) 7,2 +3,2 3/7 (*) 7,2 +3,2

5 5/7 7,7 +2,7 12/53 7,9 +2,9

6 6 6,2 +0,2 25 (*) 6,3 +0,3

7 9 (*) 9,3 +2,3 9/7 8,9 +1,9

8 78910 9,5 +1,5 46 (*) 8,9 +0,9

9 4/9 7,3 1,7 3 (*) 6,5 2,5

10 12/73 (*) 8,5 1,5 10/58 7,5 2,5

11 11/10 9,9 1,1 9/11 9,3 1,7

12 12 10,5 1,5 9/1210 9,4 2,6

13 13 10,7 2,3 136 10,7 2,3

14 14 13,3 0,7 15/14 12,1 1,9

15 15 14,7 0,3 15/14 11,3 3,7 1The figure in bold is the principal mode. The ordinary figures represent a secondary mode, i.e. the most frequent response after the principal mode. The numbers separated by a hyphen are the cases where 2 extracts were equally located in that position. (*)=extracts for which the modes do not reflect their actual location.

b) Relationship between the actual position of the extract and the localisation judgements taken from each subject A certain degree of variability in the aptitude for remembering the time course of the work is apparent in the level of correlation between the actual order of the extracts and the order shown in the responses for each of the subjects. These levels are between .14 and .99 with a mean of .62 for the musicians; and between .38 and .79 with a mean of .30 for the non-musicians (see table 4). Negative correlations only occurred for non-musicians, the subjects who showed this having localised extracts from the end of the work at the beginning and vice-versa.

Table 4 Correlations between the actual order of the 15 extracts and the order perceived by each of the subjects.


musicians non-musicians

r P r P

.99

confirm the previous findings. There is a distinction between the organisation of groupings whilst listening on the one hand, and their retention on the other, which is controlled by the relevant cognitive processes in relation to the degree of training acquired.

Effect of the quantity of cue information

Whether an extract was relatively longer or shorter had no effect on the precision of the required localisation judgements in lay subjects. The musicians on the other hand benefited noticeably from information of a longer duration, which suggests that not only do they detect more cues but they remember relatively more detailed content information. The procedure employed in the experiment which tapped into the left overs which had been stored without further support, thus put the emphasis on the fact that the influence of practice and familiarity with the material has a greater effect on the storage and the number of markers acquired than on the formation of groupings in real time whilst listening, which may operate in a similar manner from a smaller basis of cues. It would be interesting to see whether the results of non-musicians would become significantly more like those of the musicians with regard to the complexity of the memory schema and the cue markers after several repetitions of the task.

Centred perception of events

Independently of the hypotheses studied concerning the effect of the cues extracted whilst listening to the work in question, a noticeably more restricted time course was noted in the complex schema of the lay subjects. The localisation task required the subjects to engage in a sort of retrospective scanning of what had just been heard. If we take into account a common belief, it might be imagined that a new experience would appear longer than a familiar experience, and hence we would expect a greater impression of length in non-musicians. What then is the mechanism which has produced the opposite effect in the present case i.e. the amplification of the format of the mental schema produced by the musicians? William Friedman in his recent work About time, inventing the fourth dimension (1990), brings out elements consistent with our hypotheses. Notably, touching on the phenomenon of the distortion of subjective duration, the author notes amongst other things: An interval seems longer if we remember more of its contents or if it was made up of more distinct segments. It seems shorter if we think of it in a simpler way) (p. 20). Consequently in the case which presently concerns us, the less centred temporal schema observed as a function of the competence of subjects constructing it, could be an indication that it was constructed from a less limited cue extraction procedure during listening. This proposal, which could at first glance be interpreted as being outside the hypotheses proposed hitherto, supports in what is perhaps a rather unexpected way, the line of argument employed in the previous point of the discussion.


Memory for cue characteristics and permeability of the image

Speaking of memory for temporal events, Fraisse notes not everything from our past experience is transferred into memory. A large part is not fixed. There is a large discrepancy between the immediate richness of a perception and what we can recall a few seconds later. Moreover, the deficit is not homogeneous, and in reality there is no correlation between the richness of the perceptual content and what we transfer into memory () (1967, p. 167). In view of the points discussed above, we can add to this affirmation that training, as far as memory for musical structures is concerned, opens up not only a larger memory, but also a better safeguard of the labelling of stored elements. Experience appears, to a certain extent to act as a barrier to the imprint phenomenon. Evidence of this is found in the primacy and recency effects observed in musicians and apparently absent in non-musicians. In this way, the timbre of the piano present at both the beginning and the end of Eclat and the similar organisation of the initial and final structures of the work produced this imprint phenomenon in the non-musicians, demonstrated by frequent confusions in their localisations; contrary to what is observed for the musicians. In the same way, the negative correlations noted only in the responses of non-musicians could be the result of an analogue imprint process. In fact, it appears that it is once more the strong piano presence which may cause the production of an imprint frequently leading to the placement of extracts 11 & 12 towards the beginning of the line in non-musicians, something which does not occur in musicians.

In conclusion, it appears that the mechanism for the extraction of cues, which is the basis of the perception of groupings, stems from the psychological processes present prior to training. It is for this reason that contrary to the memory process, it does not lead to such divergent results between subjects and between different types of training. As far as memory is concerned, outside the effects of musical training which have been noted, a relative inter-subject variability comes to light, such that, on the one hand the occasional musician has a fairly low level of performance whilst on the other, some non-musicians show performance levels which approach those of the most precise musicians. Should we conclude that this type of test could reveal specific/particular musical aptitudes? This aspect was not one of the concerns of this work, but would certainly merit further investigation.

(translated from the French by Diana Stammers)

Notes 1. My emphasis. 2. It may be of some use to emphasize, as regards the representation of the work in memory,

that the type of organization that cue extraction brings out is necessarily of a hierarchical nature, in view of the fact that the cue automatically becomes a dominant element in relation to a group in the first instance, and in relation to a grouping of groups when the extraction is confirmed. The hierarchical effect of the cue resides, then, within the constituted grouping: a sequential and/or hierarchical form will characterize the nature of the different groupings of groups in the mental representation as a function of the syntactic organisation of the composition.


3. The extracts are not reproduced here. The interested reader may wish to refer to the score (Universal Edition, UE 14283.

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Book CoverTitleCopyrightContentsIntroduction: Cognitive Science and MusicAn OverviewMusic in CultureAn Interactive Experimental Method for the Determination of Musical Scales in Oral CulturesThe Influence of the Taambura Drone on the Perception of Proximity Among Scale Types in North Indian Classical MusicConstraints on Music CognitionPsychoacousticalIdentification and Blend of Timbres as a Basis for OrchestrationWhat is the Octave of a Harmonically Rich Note?Brighness and Octave Position: Are Changes in Spectral Envelope and in Tone Height Perceptually Equivalent?Constraints on Music CognitionNeuralSplit-Brain Studies of Music Perception and CognitionMusic Structure in CognitionIs the Perception of Melody Governed by Motivic Arguments or by Generative Rules or by Both?Transformation, Migration and Restoration Shades of Illusion in te Perception of MusicAssociationism and Musical Soundtrack PhenomenaRhythm Perception: Interactions Between Time and IntensityMechanisms of Cue Extraction in Memory for Musical TimeGenerativity, Mimesis and the Human Body in Music PerformanceRepresentation of Musical StructureA Connectionist and a Traditional AI Quantizer, Symbolic Versus Sub-Symbolic Models of Rhythm PerceptionComputer Perception of Phrase StructureCritical Study of Sundberg's Rules for Experssion in the Performance of MelodiesContribution to the Design of an Expert System for the Generation of Tonal Multiple CounterpointComputer-Aided Comparison of Syntax Systems in Three Piano Pieces by DebussyGeneral Issues in Cognitive MusicologyPsychological Analysis of Musical CompositionHow do We Perceive Atonal Music? Suggestions for a Theoretical Approach?Name IndexSubject IndexNotes For Contributors

Deliège_Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Memory

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