Study Of Influences Of Musical Context On Musical Priming Effects

Perceptual expectancies exist ubiquitously in musical appreciation processes. Quite a lot of researches focus on musical priming effect in order to investigate the mechanism of musical perceptual expectancy. So far, a large amount of studies have been focused on the mechanism of harmonic priming. A cognitive account of musical priming holds that the relatedness in music theory between two chords is the direct reason which induces harmonic priming effect, as well as dominates the process of harmonic priming. In contrast, a sensory account argues that overlap of harmonic spectra between prime and target determines the occurrence and strength of harmonic priming which in fact is the special form of repetition priming. Does repetition priming exist in music perception? Bigand et al. (2005) investigated the problem of which the result showed that there was no repetition priming effect in process of the harmony. Nevertheless, Hutchins & Palmer (2008) discovered the repetition priming effect in perception on monophonic melodies. Results of previous studies suggest that the influential factors on music priming seem to be sophisticated. Besides the musical function of targets, properties of their musical context may influence musical priming. Considered for integration, the present study considered both harmonic priming and repetition priming as relatedness priming, and investigated the influence from musical context on relatedness priming and repetition priming in music perception via 6 experiments.By adopting the harmonic priming paradigm, experiment 1.a investigated the influence of priming condition, tonality, and expertise on musical priming. The result showed that significant relatedness priming effect occurred in the process of the harmony on musicians and non-musicians, and that the amount of relatedness priming effect in atonal musical context was larger than the one of tonal musical context. Furthermore, tonal context and musical expertise could facilitate the perceptual process on music.Using monophonic melodies as materials and singing as tasks, Experiment 1.b studied the influence of priming condition, tonality, and expertise on musical priming. The result showed occurrence of repetition priming. And it was affected by the tonality of musical context and the speed of response:repetition priming took place only in atonal melodies and on subjects who showed higher response speed. In addition, process under the repeated condition was not affected by tonality of musical context, while relatedness priming could be improved by the foundation of tonality.By employing the harmonic priming paradigm, experiment 2.a investigated the influence of priming condition and the tempo on musical priming. The result showed that the relatedness priming took place, and its occurrence and strength proved to be affected by tempo. Listener's process in low tempo of musical context showed obvious relatedness priming effect, while its strength turned to be weaker as the tempo of melody got faster, and finally it vanished at fast tempo.Using monophonic melodies as materials and singing as tasks, experiment 2.b studied the influence of priming condition and tempo on musical priming. The result showed occurrence of repetition priming in the perception on monophonic melodies, and that the amount of priming effect was affected by the change of tempo.Experiment 3.a and experiment 3.b investigated the influence from regularities of temporal and dynamic organization of rhythm on musical priming. The result failed to show any type of priming effect. Integrating results of experiment 1.a and experiment 2.a, we can surmise that disordered rhythm may inhibit the occurrence of musical priming effect.In conclusion:(1) the process of the harmony shows the relatedness priming effect which is influenced by tonality, tempo, and rhythm of musical context while is not affected by musical expertise; the disintegration of tonality, acceleration of tempo, and chaos of rhythm can inhibit the relatedness priming; (2) the process of monophonic melodies shows the repetition priming effect which is not affected by the tempo, while influences from tonality and response speed on repetition priming seem to be unstable.