Pattern interval size, transposition, repetition, and variance all shape pitch pattern judgment accuracy

Evidence

1. Small within-pattern intervals will promote grouping and thus improve performance (Gestalt proximity/similarity); 2. Small transpositions, especially when within-pattern intervals are large, may make individual patterns less distinctive, and thus impair performance; 3. Exact repetitions with no transposition will result in very good performance; 4. One exact repeat (i.e. pattern 1 = pattern 2) before introducing transpositions may allow a better pattern representation to be built and used as a template for subsequent patterns, and so improve task performance; 5. Smaller variance in the intervals within a pattern (either only small or only large intervals) will increase the predictability of the pattern and allow the formation of a more precise representation of the pattern. Therefore, task performance will decrease with increasing interval variance. 6. Musical training and experience will facilitate task performance. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5270

Categorization

• QUESTION: These six hypotheses are testable predictions — worth chasing the experimental outcomes to see which survived.