Interkey Distances Also Shorten Subjective Time Reproductions in Real Modulating Tonal Music

Real and long music stimuli are seldom used in music cognition and subjective time literatures. We found longer time reproductions for Berio’s Symphony for Eight Voices and Orchestra than for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. Berio recomposed Mahler’s symphony, inserting complexity in all its elements. The contextual-change model explains these data, predicting longer time reproduction for a greater amount of information. Thereafter, we found synthetic tonal modulations eliciting time reproductions in an inverse function of interkey distances, with major impact for sudden ones, an opposite result from contextual change prediction. Alternatively, we proposed the Expected Development Fraction (EDF) Model, claiming disproportion between expected and perceived times. In this study, we manipulated interkey distance using the real piece Inspiração by Brazilian composer Garoto. Results confirmed the EDF Model prediction. Formatting the EDF Model’s key spatial-axis according to adapted key profile measures of Krumhansl (1990) allowed close correspondence between simulations and data.