The Experimental Study Of The Tonal Expectation

Music expectation has always been a hot issue in music aesthetics and psychology. Leonard B·Meyer, a famous music psychologist from the United States, introduced the relevant links between expectation and human emotions in the field of music aesthetics which was analyzed in emotional psychology for the first time. He used the principle of Gestalt psychology to establish his "expectancy theory". After that, such as Narmour's IR theory, Lerdahl's "music tension model" and Elizabeth's "melody expectation model" theory was arisen based on principles of Gestalt psychology, They all pay attention to the system elucidation of real expectation.To classify expectation, Jamshed J.Bharucha distinguished expectation into Veridical Expectancy and Schemata Expectancy. Schemata Expectancy is the customized long-term exposure of a particular musical environment, therefore it is implicit. Current studies on Schemata Expectancy mainly use the priming paradigm on the tonal expectation which is based on tonal harmonic hierarchy. A hot issue of those studies focused on the interaction between two dimensions pitch and time processing. Currently there are two processing models as well as numerous research data. Because most of the collected data were subjective, objective data collection was insufficient, and the priming paradigm which with emphasis on the local effect under the timbre task could not reflect the global processing effect of the two.Based on the current groundwork, our study is trying to add cognitive style as a important object to pitch and timing in the interaction, the individual differences in music processing was also examined and analyzed.According to above consideration,8-chord sequences were used to investigate the tonal expectation which based on harmonic relationship and the interaction between tonal expectation and times in western tonal music. To investigate the interaction between tonal expectation and time, the difference between field-independent and field-dependent participants of tonal expectation in regular and irregular sequences with objective and subjective tasks was also discussed. The priming paradigm and required judgments whether the last chord is consonant or dissonant by participants were also recorded in our study. To investigate the different tonal expectation of filed-independent and field-dependent participants in regular and irregular sequences, we recorded and analyzed the response time and the correct response. The result suggested that the effect of harmonic relationship, regulation, and the interaction between pitch and time were significant. There was no significant difference between field-independent and field-dependent groups. However, interaction in cognitive style, harmonic relationship and regulation we've tested were significant. To collect the subject data, our study used the assess of complication task and investigated the different tonal expectation in different ending time, which revealed that the effect of harmonic relationship, ending time and the interaction between pitch and time were significant. There was no difference between field-independent and field-dependent groups.To our knowledge, the innovation of this study is the application of consonant-dissonant task which got the interaction between pitch and time processing could be better to reflect the characteristics of tonal expectation than timber task. In addition, the experiment in consonant-dissonant task got the significant interaction of cognitive style, harmonic relationships and regulation could give some suggestion to music education, performance and appreciation of individual differences.From our study, it is suggested that the music teaching should pay attention to establish a stable tonal expectation to deal with musical structure and develop a good rhythm awareness. Especially, more attention to the field-dependent students to establish a solid rhythm awareness and different cognitive styles to note the different way is also necessary.