Discrimination and Interference in the Recall of Melodic Stimuli

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Abstract
Two studies were designed to investigate the nature of forgetting in regard to melodic stimuli; specifically, the degree to which 400 college-age subjects were able to discriminate identical melodies when extremely similar melodies were interpolated between test and recall melodies. Additionally, an attempt was made to investigate differences that might be attributed to either modal (major-minor) or meter (simple-compound) presentations. In each experiment, nonmusic majors were given a 16 trial stimulus presentation consisting of nine 10-sec. melodies per trial. In each trial, the initial test melody was presented followed by 8 additional melodies. After each of the melody presentations, subjects indicated whether that particular melody was identical to or different from, the first test melody. All 144 melodies for the 16 trials were extremely similar in that they represented 4 alterations of 4 similar original melodies. The original melodies were based on a descending diatonic scale with modal and meter alterations. The first experiment attempted to isolate simple-compound alterations; the second experiment, major-minor alterations. Results indicated that subjects were able to discriminate effectively throughout the stimulus presentations with extremely high accuracy for those specific melodies that were identical to the test melody. In addition, when melodies were identical except for slight modifications, melodies presented in duple meter appeared less susceptible to interference than melodies in triple meter or than melodies having modal changes. As would be expected, accuracy declined across time and across interpolated melodies; however, even after 8 interpolated melodies, subjects recalled the test melody with at least 43% accuracy.