Expectation in Melody: The Influence of Context and Learning

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].. THE IMPLICATION-REALIZATION (IR) theory (Narmour, 1990) posits two cognitive systems involved in the generation of melodic expectations: The first consists of a limited number of symbolic rules that are held to be innate and universal; the second reflects the top-down influences of acquired stylistic knowledge. Aspects of both systems have been implemented as quantitative models in research which has yielded empirical support for both components of the theory However, there is also evidence that the implemented bottom-up rules constitute too inflexible a model to account for the influence of the musical experience of the listener and the melodic context in which expectations are elicited. A theory is presented, according to which both bottom-up and top-down descriptions of observed patterns of melodic expectation may be accounted for in terms of the induction of statistical regularities in existing musical repertoires. A computational model that embodies this theory is developed and used to rean-alyze existing experimental data on melodic expectancy. The results of three experiments with increasingly complex melodic stimuli demonstrate that this model is capable of accounting for listeners' expectations as well as or better than the two-factor model of Schellenberg (1997). The generation of expectations is recognized as being an especially important factor in music cognition. From a music-analytic perspective, it has been argued that the generation and subsequent confirmation or violation of expectations is critical to aesthetic experience, and the communication of emotion and meaning in music While most empirical research has examined the influence of melodic structure, expectancy in music also reflects the influence of rhythmic and metric structure The present research examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying the generation of melodic expectations. Narmour (1990, 1992) has proposed a detailed and influential theory of expectancy in melody which attempts to characterize the set of implied continuations to an incomplete melodic sequence. According to the theory, the expectations of a listener are influenced by two distinct cognitive systems: first, a bottom-up system consisting of Gestalt-like principles that are held to be innate and universal; and second, a top-down system consisting of style-specific influences on expectancy which are acquired through extensive exposure to …