Four experiments assessed the influence of emergent-level structure on melodic processing difficulty. Emergent-level structure was manipulated across experiments and defined with reference to the Implication-Realization model of melodic expectancy (Narmour, 1990, 1992, 2000). Two measures of melodic processing difficulty were used to assess the influence of emergent-level structure: serial-reconstruction and cohesion ratings. In the serial-reconstruction experiment (Experiment 1), reconstruction was more efficient for melodies with simple emergent-level structure. In the cohesion experiments (Experiments 2-4), ratings were higher for melodies with simple emergent-level structure, and the advantage was generally greater in the presence of simple surface-level structure. Results indicate that emergent-level structure as defined by the model can influence melodic processing difficulty.

this research addressed the question: is musical memory preserved in dementia, specifically, dementia of the Alzheimer type (AD)? Six tests involving different aspects of melody and language processing were administered to each of five groups of participants: 50 younger adults, 100 older adults, and 50 AD older adults classified into three levels of AD severity—mild, moderate and severe. No test was immune to, but not all tests were equally sensitive to, the presence of dementia. Long-term familiarity for melody was preserved across levels of AD, even at the severe stage for a few individuals. Detecting pitch distortions in melodies was possible for mild and some of the moderate AD participants. The ability to sing a melody when prompted by its lyrics was retained at the mild stage and was retained by a few individuals through the severe stages of AD. Long-term familiarity with the lyrics of familiar melodies was also found across levels of AD. In contrast, detection of grammatical distortions in the lyrics of familiar melodies and the ability to complete familiar proverbs were affected even at the mild stage of AD. We conclude that musical semantic memory may be spared through the mild and moderate stages of AD and may be preserved even in some individuals at the severe stage.

the present study addressed episodic and semantic memory for melodies in three groups of participants: 35 younger adults, 40 older adults, and 10 individuals with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). To assess episodic memory, a study list of eight novel target melodies was presented three times, followed by a test trial in which target melodies were mixed with foil (previously unheard) melodies. Both explicit and implicit measures were obtained. Explicit memory was assessed by the accuracy of discrimination of the target melodies from the foils. Younger adults were significantly more accurate than older adults, who in turn had significantly higher scores than AD adults. Implicit memory was assessed by examining the difference in pleasantness ratings between target and foil melodies. Younger adults showed significantly greater differences in pleasantness ratings than older adults and AD adults; scores for the two latter groups did not differ. To assess semantic memory, participants were asked to identify traditional melodies within a series of traditional and novel melodies. In contrast to the episodic memory results, all three groups showed very high scores on the semantic memory task with no significant differences among groups. The results support the notion that, though other forms of musical memory may be compromised, semantic memory for melody may be preserved in normal aging and in AD.

RECENTLY, WE POINTED OUT THAT A SMALL number of individuals fail to acquire basic musical abilities, and that these deficiencies might have neuronal and genetic underpinnings. Such a musical disorder is now termed "congenital amusia," an umbrella term for lifelong musical disabilities that cannot be attributed to mental retardation, deafness, or lack of exposure. Congenital amusia is a condition that is estimated to affect 4% of the general population. Despite this relatively high prevalence, cases of congenital amusia have been difficult to identify.We present here a novel on-line test that can be used to identify such cases in 15 minutes, provided that the cohort of the participant is taken into account. The results also confirm that congenital amusia is typically expressed by a deficit in perceiving musical pitch but not musical time.

IN THIS ARTICLE, WE FIRST REPORT the data of normal music readers on a new music-reading battery developed in our laboratory. The battery was inspired by the brain damage literature on music-reading deficits and comprised visual and auditory tasks. Second, we report the battery data of IG, a university musician who was referred to us as potentially dyslexic for music, and also her data on text reading and neuropsychological tests.We compare IG's data with those of normal readers.We suggest that IG might represent a case of associated music and text developmental dyslexia.Her results also indicate a dissociation between her pitch and rhythm reading abilities not quite the same as normal readers, as well as an interesting dissociation between reading and repetition, opposite to normal readers.

Children (3––6 years old) and adults were trained for 6 weeks to identify a single tone, C 5 . Test sessions, held at the end of each week, had participants identify C 5 within a set of seven alternative tones. By the third week of training, identification accuracy of children 5––6 years old surpassed the accuracies of children 3––4 years old and adults. Combined with an analysis of perceptual strategies, the data provide strong support for a critical period for absolute pitch acquisition. Received July 12, 2003, accepted August 1,2003

Years of formal music training and proficiency at a nonmusical skill—— verbal recall——are surprisingly associated (e.g., A. R. Kilgour, L. S. Jakobson, & L. L. Cuddy, 2000). The present study proposes an indirect mechanism to account for this association. It is proposed that music training strengthens auditory temporal-order processing, and that temporalorder processing then mediates the relationship between years of music training and prose recall.

Listeners with a moderate amount of musical training rated the distance between the first and final key of short chorale excerpts under one of four presentation conditions. The distance between keys, or modulation distance, was either zero, one, or two steps in either the clockwise or counterclockwise direction on the cycle of fifths. Presentation conditions were four-voice harmonic sequences excerpted from the complete set of Bach chorales, single voices of the latter sequences, four-voice harmonic sequences simplified to block chords, and single voices of the latter sequences. Consistent with earlier findings (Thompson & Cuddy, 1989), judgments for both four- voice harmonic presentations and single-voice presentations revealed a close correspondence between modulation distance and judged distance. Ratings for harmonic sequences within a given key distance, however, showed influences of direction of modulation and of harmonic progression that were not reflected in ratings for single voices. The findings suggest that harmony and melody follow somewhat different principles in the process of identifying key change.

Two experiments examined sensitivity to key change in short sequences adapted from Bach chorales. In Experiment 1, musically trained listeners identified key changes in single-voice (i.e., soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and in four-voice presentations of the sequences. There were two main findings. First, listeners judged the distance and direction of key change in single voices and in four-voice harmony with approximately equal ease. Second, for four-voice harmony but not for single voices, the direction of key change on the cycle of fifths influenced perceived distance. For an equivalent number of steps on the cycle, greater distance was associated with modulations moving in the counterclockwise, rather than in the clockwise, direction. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2, in which musically untrained listeners rated perceived distance of key change. In addition, the directional asymmetry found for four-voice harmony also was found for individual bass voices. The evidence suggests that harmony and melody operate somewhat independently in the implication of key structure. Difficulties for a strictly hierarchical model of perceived musical pitch structure are discussed and a partially hierarchical model is considered.