Cognitive Models of Language and Beyond

Assignments Week 5: Music Perception and Cognition

Hielke Prins, 6359973

Answers

1. (a) An obvious grouping structure follows the bars in the score, it includes an upbeat at the start
of the piece. Except for the measure with the upbeat, all others are of equal length (6/8).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Although the above structure follows the time signature imposed by the score representation of
the song, it does not seem to correspond with a natural perception of the piece (at least not for
me). A different grouping follows the perceived structure units more closely:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

One could further devise these groups into subgroups according to Grouping Preference Rule 3
(GPR3) formulated by Lerdahl & Jackendoff (1983). Transition 1-2 for example is a candidate
grouping boundary because of the relatively large difference in pitch. Borders on transitions 7-8
and 17-18 can be rectified by differences in both, pitch and duration.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

(b) Such a subdivision however would violate GPR1 since it introduces several groups of only
a single note. According to GPR1, groups containing a single event should be avoided.
Furthermore, the second grouping (1-4, 5-8, 9-10, 11-14, 15-18) reveals more of the repetitive

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 structure that seems to be present in the piece, with 11-14 and 15-18 rehearsing a motive in 1-4
and 5-8 (GPR6, parallelism). Finally, stretches 1-8 and 11-18 are of equal length satisfying
GPR5 (symmetry) better then the third proposal. The second analysis might therefore most
likely be perceived according to Lerdahl & Jackendoff.

(c) From the structures above, the second is indeed closest to my own perception. However
drawing the second border between 7-8 instead of 8-9 (as in the third grouping structure), to me
also seems justified. Both, in terms of personal perception and the rules formulated by Lerdahl
& Jackendoff. Like 7-8, transition 8-9 involves a difference in duration. Although there is no
difference in pitch, pitch difference between the 8 th and 9th note is minor as well. However, a
border on 8-9 rather then 7-8 is rectified by the difference in intervals between attack points
(GPR2, proximity).

2. Lerdahl & Jackendoff (1983) claim an important role for Gestalt principles in grouping
preference for all perceiving participants. The article by Scheafer, Murre & Bod (2004)
however, demonstrates that the extent to which participants follow these principles when
perceiving a piece of music with many ambiguities, depends on their level of training.
Participants with a moderate or high level of musical experience let more of the assigned
boundaries violate the Gestalt principles (violating versus non-violating boundaries follow a
ratio of approximately 1:1) then participant with a low level of previous experience did (a ratio
of 2:1).

Gestalt principles are seen by Lerdahl & Jackendoff as universally applicable as segmentation
cues for different modalities. At first glance, the results of Scheafer, Murre & Bod (2004) 1
therefore seem to compromise the assumption that segmentation of melodies follows the same
principles as segmentation in the visual domain does. Apparently music perception and the
mechanisms behind it, adapt themselves to better suite demands of expertise specific for the
musical domain. Other mechanisms seem to overrule the Gestalt principles when experts
segment a melody.

Such mechanisms might be skill acquisition (better recognition of relevant cues as well as
automatic and thus more consistent use of these cues) or just long-term memory (better
estimation of frequently reoccurring patterns underlying plausible segmentation). The latter is
compatible with the assumption in Bod (2002) that familiar excerpts from a melody are grouped
in the same way as previously encountered similar fragments. An unsupervised Data Oriented
Parsing (U-DOP) approach to music perception would exploit stored solutions to previously
encountered segmentation problems in this way. Since the correct segmentation can not be
known beforehand, it would initially have to take all possible segmentations of a melody into
account. For novice participants and untrained models these could be constrained using the
Gestalt principles.

One can not entirely exclude that skill acquisition and pattern recognition play an equivalent
role in visual perception, likewise overruling general Gestalt principles. Such a bold position
has been put forward in studies of skill acquisition in chess (Chabris, 1999) 2. More likely,
Gestalt principles in visual perception reflect a strong bias towards extremely frequent
occurring spatial patterns of proximity and similarity, whereas segmentation cues relevant for
musical perception are weaker and do not always correspond with Gestalt principles of

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 proximity and similarity.

Given the commonalities between music and language perception described in Patel (2008) 3,
Gestalt principles are unlikely to be the sole mechanism behind music perception since speech
violates these principles in many different ways. As opposed to pitch, timbre involves multiple
harmonic complexes that are neither stationary nor continuous. The spectrum of a speech signal
varies greatly over time and is continuously interrupted at stop closures. The ability to create
and maintain discrete sound categories on the other hand remains to be important but could be
aided by segmentation cues that are more flexible and more elaborate. That said, limited
adherence to Gestalt principles does not have to imply limited universality within or over
different modalities, as other mechanisms might maintain uniformity in handling different
modalities by observers with different levels of experience.

References
1. Schaefer RS, Murre JMJ, Bod R. Limits to Universality in Segmentation of Simple Melodies.
2004. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.58.990 [Accessed
March 14, 2011].

2. Chabris CF. Cognitive and neuropsychological mechanisms of expertise: Studies with chess
masters. DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 1999. Available at:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.63.7190 [Accessed March 14, 2011].

3. Patel AD. Science & Music: Talk of the tone. Nature. 2008;453(7196):726-727.

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