This thesis investigates implicit memory for music, as measured by repetition priming: a processing benefit for previously encountered items. Although repetition priming has been documented in many domains, including language, visual perception, and environmental sounds, it has not yet been demonstrated in music, a domain replete with pitch repetition. A novel methodology is presented in which participants sang back the final tone of a short melody. Experiments presented in Chapter 2 show that participants were faster to sing back a target tone when it was a repetition of a previous melodic tone than when it was not, and this effect was greatest when the repetition was closest to the target. These studies also showed a benefit for expected tonic tones, which were manipulated independently of the repetition effect. Chapter 3 presents a new analysis method for measuring response latencies in sung tones. A time-frequency representation that optimizes the tradeoff between time and frequency for each point in time yielded a measurement of singers' time to reach a target frequency, which takes into account both speed and accuracy of the vocal productions. The time-frequency measurement, applied to the data presented in Chapter 2, showed longer times to reach target frequency for higher pitches, as well as larger effects of tonal priming than were attained through traditional response latency measures. The experiments in Chapter 4 examine the time course of the effects of repetition and tonality. The singing-back paradigm used in Chapter 2 also was used with the additional manipulation of stimulus tempo. These studies implicated interference rather than decay as the cause of the decreased repetition priming effect. Stimulus tempo manipulations showed separate time courses for repetition and tonal priming. Together, these studies provide the first evidence of repetition priming in music, document its interaction with other factors including tonality and pitch height, and describe its time course. The findings are discussed in terms of sensory and cognitive theories of priming.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.115889 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Hutchins, Sean. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002837832, proquestno: AAINR66674, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds