Abstract
In the laboratory, musical novices often seem insensitive even to
basic structural elements of music (octaves, intervals, etc.), undermining
long-held theories of music perception, and threatening to leave
current theories applicable only to experts. Consequently it is important
to demonstrate novices' basic listening competence where possible.
Two experiments examined the perception of musical intervals (minor
thirds, major thirds and perfect fourths) by musical novices. Subjects
received either standard instructions or familiar folk-tune labels
to aid performance. The folk-tune labels greatly improved identification
performance, producing expert-caliber performance by some musically
inexperienced subjects. The effectiveness of the folk-tune manipulation
was much more limited in a difficult discrimination task. The results
suggest that novices do have some basic competence when assayed appropriately,
and that familiar musical tokens may be a critical element in such
assays. Larger implications of the role of familiarity in novices'
competence are discussed, including those that relate to music cognition
and aesthetics.
- (psychology),psychoacoustics,random
- adolescent,adult,attention,female,humans,individuality,male,mental
- aged,music,pitch
- allocation,acquisition,interval,music,musicality,perception,pitch
- discrimination,practice
- recall,middle
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