Effects of tone sets and serial orders on melodic tracking: Dependence or independence?
Annabel J. Cohen, Bradley W. Frankland, Michael G. Lamoureux, Debora Dunphy · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1990
Forty listeners, differing in level of musical experience, indicated the serial order of eight tones in 32 sequences representing all combinations of four tone sets or scales (major, minor, chromatic, and three-semitone spacing) and eight serial orders. Responses were produced with a mouse, which controlled the vertical height (representing pitch height) of a series of eight sliders (representing the eight temporal positions in the sequence) on a computer screen. Response accuracy was higher for tone sets with wider frequency ranges, for serial orders with simpler contours, for sequences in which the tone set did not vary from trial to trial and for listeners with musical training. An interaction between tone set and serial order indicated their interdependent contributions to melodic tracking performance. This interaction was previously observed using a less refined technique [Cohen and Frankland, Canadian Acoustics (submitted)] and the results are here extended to more rapid sequences, to complementary response-time information and to specific serial position analysis of relative and absolute errors. [Work supported by NSERC.]