Behavioural pretest

A behavioural pretest was first conducted with the aim to replicate the improved pitch discrimination for tonic than for subdominant final tones observed by Marmel et al. (2008, Exp.3) with a different degree of pitch deviation (9 cents in Marmel et al., 2008 vs. 13 cents in the present study). In this pretest, nine participants (instrumental instruction between 0 and 10 years, with a mean of 5.1) had to judge whether penultimate and final tones were identical or different on a 4-point rating scale (1: sure different / 2: not sure different / 3: not sure same / 4: sure same). One block of the 48 experimental melodies were presented. Participant’s ability to discriminate between in-tune and mistuned final tones was analyzed by calculating areas under the ROC (Swets, 1973) and performing an ANOVA on area scores, with Tonal Relatedness (Tonic / Subdominant) as a within-participant factor. This ANOVA revealed a significant effect of Tonal Relatedness (Figure 2): Pitch Discrimination was better when the two final tones were tonics than when they were subdominants (F(1,8) = 6.37; p < .05). This result replicates the finding of Marmel et al. (2008, Exp.3).

Figure 2. Areas under the receiver-operating characteristics (ROCs) for the behavioral pretest presented as a function of tonal relatedness (related tonic, i ; less related subdominant). Chance level is as 0.5. Error bars represent standard errors.