title: Implicit learning of tonality: a self-organizing approach.
abstract: Tonal music is a highly structured system that is ubiquitous in our cultural environment. We demonstrate the acquisition of implicit knowledge of tonal structure through neural self-organization resulting from mere exposure to simultaneous and sequential combinations of tones. In the process of learning, a network with fundamental neural constraints comes to internalize the essential correlational structure of tonal music. After learning, the network was run through a range of experiments from the literature. The model provides a parsimonious account of a variety of empirical findings dealing with the processing of tone, chord, and key relationships, including relatedness judgments, memory judgments, and expectancies. It also illustrates the plausibility of activation being a unifying mechanism underlying a range of cognitive tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université de Bourgogne, LEAD-CNRS, Dijon, France. barbara.tillmann@dartmouth.edu
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tillmann
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Bharucha
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bigand
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009146:Music; D011582:Psychological Theory