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Can musical transformations be implicitly learned?

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:59 authored by Zoltan DienesZoltan Dienes, Christopher Longuet-Higgins
The dominant theory of what people can learn implicitly is that they learn chunks of adjacent elements in sequences. A type of musical grammar that goes beyond specifying allowable chunks is provided by serialist or 12-tone music. The rules constitute operations over variables and could not be appreciated as such by a system that can only chunk elements together. A series of studies investigated the extent to which people could implicitly (or explicitly) learn the structures of serialist music. We found that people who had no background in atonal music did not learn the structures, but highly selected participants with an interest in atonal music could implicitly learn to detect melodies instantiating the structures. The results have implications for both theorists of implicit learning and composers who may wish to know which structures they put into a piece of music can be appreciated.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Cognitive Science

ISSN

0364-0213

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

4

Volume

28

Page range

531-558

Pages

38.0

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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