Caroline Palmer

Mental representations for musical meter.

Investigations of the psychological representation for musical meter provided evidence for an internalized hierarchy from 3 sources: frequency distributions in musical compositions, goodness-of-fit judgments of temporal patterns in metrical contexts, and memory confusions in discrimination judgments. The frequency with which musical events occurred in different temporal locations differentiates one meter from another and coincides with music-theoretic predictions of accent placement. Goodness-of-fit judgments for events presented in metrical contexts indicated a multileveled hierarchy of relative accent strength, with finer differentiation among hierarchical levels by musically experienced than inexperienced listeners. Memory confusions of temporal patterns in a discrimination task were characterized by the same hierarchy of inferred accent strength. These findings suggest mental representations for structural regularities underlying musical meter that influence perceiving, remembering, and composing music.

Independent temporal and pitch structures in determination of musical phrases.

In two experiments we addressed the roles of temporal and pitch structures in judgments of melodic phrases. Musical excerpts were rated on how good or complete a phrase they made. In Experiment 1, trials in the temporal condition retained the original temporal pattern but were equitonal; trials in the pitch condition retained the original pitch pattern but were equitemporal; and trials in the melody condition contained both temporal and pitch patterns. In Experiment 2, one pattern (pitch or temporal) was shifted in phase and recombined with the other pattern to create the pitch and temporal conditions. In the melody condition, both patterns were shifted together. In both experiments, ratings in the temporal and pitch conditions were uncorrelated, and the melody condition ratings were accurately predicted by a linear combination of the pitch and temporal condition ratings. These results were consistent across musicians with varying levels of experience.

Skill Acquisition in Music Performance: Relations between Planning and Temporal Control.

We investigated the acquisition of music performance skills in novice and expert pianists. Temporal disruptions in novice performances coincided with constraints in planning capacities. Child and adult pianists ranging in age (9-26 years), training (3-15 years) and sight-reading ability learned to perform a novel musical piece in eleven practice trials. Computer-detected pitch and timing errors revealed: (1) gradual improvements in performance tempo and pitch accuracy with skill level and practice, generally fitting a power function; (2) a relative-timing/pitch accuracy trade-off and high incidence of simultaneous pitch/time errors; (3) improvements in relative timing (temporal continuity, underlying beat, metrical structure) with skill and practice; and (4) increased anticipatory behavior and a greater range of planning with skill and practice. A strong positive relationship between the mastery of temporal constraints and planning abilities within performance suggests that these two cognitive indicators are closely related and may arise from segmentation processes during performance. Examination of sequence timing may explicate planning abilities that underlie many complex skills.

Pitch and temporal contributions to musical phrase perception: Effects of harmony, performance timing, and familiarity

Four experiments assessed pitch and temporal contributions to phrase judgments made on excerpts from classical music. In Experiment 1, pitch-condition trials retained the original pitch pattern but were equitemporal, temporal-condition trials retained the original temporal pattern but were equitonal, and combined-condition trials contained both patterns. In Experiment 2, one pattern was shifted in phase and recombined with the other pattern to create the pitch and temporal conditions; in the combined condition, both patterns were shifted together. The stimuli in Experiments 3 and 4 used durations from a recorded performance. In all experiments, a linear combination of the pitch- and temporal-condition ratings accurately predicted the combinedcondition ratings. Familiarity with the music resulted in a higher correlation between pitch- and temporal-condition ratings, but did not alter the additive relationship; performance timing had little effect.

Units of knowledge in music performance

The units of knowledge that form cognitive plans for music performance were examined in production errors. In Experiment 1, pianists performed multivoice homophonic music (containing strong across-voice associations) and polyphonic music (containing strong within-voice associations). Pitch errors reflected more chordal (across-voice) units in homophonic performances and more single-note units in polyphonic performances. Error instructions were harmonically and diatonically related to their intended pitches more often than chance, which demonstrates retrieval-based influences on planning. In Experiment 2, pianists conceptualized one of several voices as melody. Both the melody and the voice controlled by outer right-hand fingers (a common location of melody) contained fewer errors, which implies that there are conceptual, retrieval-based, and articulatory influences on units of knowledge that contribute to planning music performance.

Anatomy of a Performance: Sources of Musical Expression

Research on music performance often assumes that a performer9s intention to emphasize musical structure as specified in a score accounts for most musical expression. Relatively unstudied sources of expression in performance include notational variants of compositional scores, performer-specific aspects, and the cultural norms of a particular idiom, including both stylistic patterns that exist across musical works and expectations that arise from a particular musical context. A case study of an expert performance of a Mozart piano sonata is presented in which influences of historical interpretations of scores, performer-specific treatments of ornamentation and pedaling, and music- theoretic notions of melodic expectancy and tension-relaxation are revealed. Patterns of organization internal to the performance expression transcended the coarsegrained information given in scores, suggesting that performance is a better starting point than a musical score for testing theories of many musical behaviors.

Auditory feedback and memory for music performance: Sound evidence for an encoding effect

Research on the effects of context and task on learning and memory has included approaches that emphasize processes during learning (e.g., Craik & Tulving, 1975) and approaches that emphasize a match of conditions during learning with conditions during a later test of memory (e.g., Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977; Proteau, 1992; Tulving & Thomson, 1973). We investigated the effects of auditory context on learning and retrieval in three experiments on memorized music performance (a form of serial recall). Auditory feedback (presence or absence) was manipulated while pianists learned musical pieces from notation and when they later played the pieces from memory. Auditory feedback during learning significantly improved later recall. However, auditory feedback at test did not significantly affect recall, nor was there an interaction between conditions at learning and test. Auditory feedback in music performance appears to be a contextual factor that affects learning but is relatively independent of retrieval conditions.

Tactile feedback and timing accuracy in piano performance

Sequential actions such as playing a piano or tapping in synchrony to an external signal put high cognitive and motor demands on producers, including the generation of precise timing at a wide variety of rates. Tactile information from the fingertips has been shown to contribute to the control of timing in finger tapping tasks. We addressed the hypothesis that reduction of timing errors is related to tactile afferent information in pianists’ finger movements during performance. Twelve pianists performed melodies at four rates in a synchronization-continuation paradigm. The pianists’ finger motion trajectories toward the piano keys, recorded with a motion capture system, contained different types and amounts of kinematic landmarks at different performance rates. One landmark, a finger–key (FK) landmark, can occur when the finger makes initial contact with the key surface and changes its acceleration abruptly. Overall, there were more FK landmarks in the pianists’ keystrokes, as the performance rate increased. The pianists were divided into two groups: those with low percentages of FK in the medium rates that increased with increasing performance rate and those with persistently high FK percentages. Low-FK pianists showed a positive relationship between increased tactile feedback from the current keystroke and increased temporal accuracy in the upcoming keystroke. These findings suggest that sensory information available at finger–key contact enhances the timing accuracy of finger movements in piano performance.

Action-based effects on music perception

The classical, disembodied approach to music cognition conceptualizes action and perception as separate, peripheral processes. In contrast, embodied accounts of music cognition emphasize the central role of the close coupling of action and perception. It is a commonly established fact that perception spurs action tendencies. We present a theoretical framework that captures the ways in which the human motor system and its actions can reciprocally influence the perception of music. The cornerstone of this framework is the common coding theory, postulating a representational overlap in the brain between the planning, the execution, and the perception of movement. The integration of action and perception in so-called internal models is explained as a result of associative learning processes. Characteristic of internal models is that they allow intended or perceived sensory states to be transferred into corresponding motor commands (inverse modeling), and vice versa, to predict the sensory outcomes of planned actions (forward modeling). Embodied accounts typically refer to inverse modeling to explain action effects on music perception (Leman, 2007). We extend this account by pinpointing forward modeling as an alternative mechanism by which action can modulate perception. We provide an extensive overview of recent empirical evidence in support of this idea. Additionally, we demonstrate that motor dysfunctions can cause perceptual disabilities, supporting the main idea of the paper that the human motor system plays a functional role in auditory perception. The finding that music perception is shaped by the human motor system and its actions suggests that the musical mind is highly embodied. However, we advocate for a more radical approach to embodied (music) cognition in the sense that it needs to be considered as a dynamical process, in which aspects of action, perception, introspection, and social interaction are of crucial importance.

Conceptual and Motor Learning in Music Performance

Are the mental plans for action abstract or specified in terms of the movements with which they are produced? We report motor independence for expert music performance but not for novice performance in a transfer-of-learning task. Skilled adult pianists practiced musical pieces and transferred to new pieces with the same or different motor (hand and finger) requirements and conceptual (melodic) relations. Greatest transfer in sequence duration was observed when the same conceptual relations were retained from training to transfer, regardless of motor movements. In a second experiment, novice child pianists performed the same task. More experienced child pianists showed transfer on both the motor and the conceptual dimensions; the least experienced child pianists demonstrated transfer only to sequences with identical motor and conceptual dimensions. These findings suggest that mental plans for action become independent of the required movements only at advanced skill levels.