title: Expectancy in melody: tests of children and adults.
abstract: Melodic expectancies among children and adults were examined. In Experiment 1, adults, 11-year-olds, and 8-year-olds rated how well individual test tones continued fragments of melodies. In Experiment 2, 11-, 8-, and 5-year-olds sang continuations to 2-tone stimuli. Response patterns were analyzed using 2 models of melodic expectancy. Despite having fewer predictor variables, the 2-factor model (E. G. Schellenberg, 1997) equaled or surpassed the implication-realization model (E. Narmour, 1990) in predictive accuracy. Listeners of all ages expected the next tone in a melody to be proximate in pitch to the tone heard most recently. Older listeners also expected reversals of pitch direction, specifically for tones that changed direction after a disruption of proximity and for tones that formed symmetric patterns.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada. g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: E Glenn
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Schellenberg
authors.forename: Mayumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Adachi
authors.forename: Kelly T
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Purdy
authors.forename: Margaret C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: McKinnon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009146:Music; D010466:Perceptual Closure; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013018:Sound Spectrography