Abstract
In three experiments, musicians and nonmusicians were compared in their ability to discriminate musical chords. Pairs of chords sharing all notes in common or having different notes were played in succession. Some pairs of chords differed in timbre independent of their musical structures because they were played on different instruments. Musicians outperformed nonmusicians only in recognizing the same chord played on different instruments. Both groups could discriminate between instrument timbres, although musicians did slightly better than nonmusicians. In contrast, with chord structures not conforming to the rules of tonal harmony, musicians and nonmusicians performed equally poorly in recognizing identical chords played on different instruments. Signal detection analysis showed that musicians and nonmusicians set similar criteria for these judgments. Musicians' superiority reflects greater sensitivity to familiar diatonic chords. These results are taken as evidence that musicians develop perceptual and cognitive skills specific to the lawful musical structures encountered in their culture's music. Nonmusicians who lack this knowledge based their judgments on the acoustical properties of the chords.
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This paper is based on a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Waterloo. A version of the paper was presented at the 41st meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, June, 1980.
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Beal, A.L. The skill of recognizing musical structures. Memory & Cognition 13, 405–412 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198453
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198453