title: Pitch and rhythmic patterns affecting infants' sensitivity to musical phrase structure.
abstract: The present studies were undertaken to learn more about the nature of the cues that underlie infants' perception of musical phrase structure. Experiment 1 demonstrated that infants in Krumhansl and Jusczyk's (1990) study were responding to the phrase structure instead of to the beginnings and endings of Mozart minuet stimuli. Experiment 2 showed that infants treat musical passages with pauses inserted at phrase boundaries much as they do unaltered versions of the same passages. Experiments 3 and 4 indicated that the direction of change in pitch height and tone duration is critical to obtaining longer orientation times to musical passages that are segmented at phrase boundaries. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrates that different effects found for the forward and reversed versions of the passages with inserted pauses are not the result of an intrinsic preference for the forward versions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Buffalo 14260.
authors.forename: P W
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Jusczyk
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Krumhansl
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010507:Periodicity; D010898:Pitch Perception