Music segmentation is a widely researched topic within music perception. Even though there is extensive data on the role of surface structure features and music training (e.g., Deliège, 1987) in segmentation, not much is known yet about the influence of implicit knowledge-based features acquired through musical enculturation. The goal of our study was to fill this gap. Makam music-trained musicians, nonmusicians, and Western listeners marked their segmentations online as they listened to mostly 19th century, unfamiliar Turkish makam tunes, all recorded in a Qānūn timbre on MIDI with retained microtonal structure. In addition, two experts segmented the tunes in a free-time setting. We found considerable within- and across-group agreement, as well as good agreement with the expert segmentations. After transforming each participant’s segmentations into “hits” and “false alarms” based on their match or mismatch with expert segmentations, we observed that musicians overlapped significantly more with expert segmentations than do the other two groups. Segmentations in all three groups were strongly driven by mostly local surface features. Overall, our results are more supportive of a universality claim as proposed by the Gestalt school of psychology than an enculturation claim.

In theories of auditory scene analysis and melodic implication/realization, melodic expectation results from an interaction between top-down processes (assumed to be learned and schema-based) and bottom-up processes (assumed innate, based on Gestalt principles). If principles of melodic expectation are partly acquired, it should be possible to manipulate them – to condition listeners' expectations. In this study, the resistance of three bottom-up expectation principles to learning was tested experimentally. In Experiment 1, expectations for stepwise motion (pitch proximity) were manipulated by conditioning listeners to large melodic leaps; preference for small intervals was reduced after a brief exposure. In Experiment 2, expectations for leaps to rise and steps to fall (step declination) were manipulated by exposing listeners to melodies comprising rising steps and falling leaps; this reduced preferences for descending seconds and thirds. Experiment 3 did not find and hence failed to alter the expectation for small intervals to be followed by an interval in the same direction (step inertia). The results support the theory that bottom-up principles of melodic perception are partly learned from exposure to pitch patterns in music. The long-term learning process could be reinforced by exposure to speech based on similar organization principles.