Learning unfamiliar pitch intervals: A novel paradigm for demonstrating the learning of statistical associations between musical pitches

While mastering a musical instrument takes years, becoming familiar with a new music system requires less time and skills. In this study, we examine whether musically untrained Western listeners can incidentally learn an unfamiliar, microtonal musical scale from simply engaging in a timbre discrimination task. The experiment is comprised of an Exposure and a Test phase. During Exposure, 21 non-musicians were instructed to detect a timbre shift (TS) within short microtonal melodies, and we hypothesised that they would incidentally learn about the pitch interval structure of the microtonal scale from attending to the melodies during the task. In a follow-up Test phase, the tone before the TS was either a member (congruent) or a non-member (incongruent) of the scale. Based on our statistical manipulation of the stimuli, incongruent tones would be a better predictor of an incoming TS than the congruent tones. We therefore expect a faster response time to the shift after the participants have heard an incongruent tone. Specifically, a faster response time observed after an incongruent tone would imply participants’ ability to differentiate tones from the microtonal and the diatonic scale, and reflect their learning of the microtonal pitch intervals. Results are consistent with our predictions. In investigating the learning of a microtonal scale, our study can offer directions for future research on the perception of computer music and new musical genres.尽管掌握一门乐器需耗费数年之功，但熟悉一套全新的音乐体系所需的时间与技能门槛则要低得多。本研究旨在探究：未接受过音乐训练的西方听众能否仅通过参与一项音色辨别任务（timbre discrimination task），便偶然习得一套陌生的微分音音阶（microtonal musical scale）。 本实验包含暴露阶段与测试阶段两个环节。在暴露阶段中，21名未受过音乐训练的参与者被要求在短小的微分音旋律中检测音色位移（timbre shift, TS）；我们假设，参与者在完成任务的过程中会通过聆听这些旋律，偶然习得该微分音音阶的音程结构。 在后续的测试阶段中，音色位移前的音调可分为两类：一类为该微分音音阶的内音（congruent，一致音），另一类为该音阶的外音（incongruent，不一致音）。通过对实验刺激的统计学操控，我们可预设：相较于一致音，不一致音能更好地预测即将到来的音色位移。据此，我们预期参与者在听到不一致音后，对音色位移的反应时会更短。 具体而言，若参与者在听到不一致音后反应时更短，则表明其能够区分微分音音阶与自然音阶（diatonic scale）中的音调，同时也印证了其对该微分音音阶音程的习得情况。实验结果与我们的预期相符。 本研究围绕微分音音阶的习得展开，可为未来计算机音乐感知与新型音乐流派相关研究提供参考方向。