Background
Pitch and rhythm are two fundamental components of music perception, though pitch is often found to play a more dominant role than rhythm in music recognition. Findings of dimensional salience—certain auditory features stand out more than others—has repeatedly emerged across diverse research paradigms, underscoring its significance in addressing fundamental questions of music perception (White, 1960; Hébert & Peretz, 1997; Albouy et al., 2020). However, many of these studies rely on Western music stimuli and samples, the paradigm also often lacks ecological validity in cross-cultural contexts (Sloboda et al., 2001; Tervaniemi, 2023; Jacoby et al., 2020). The BaYaka Mbendjele, a hunter-gatherer community in the Republic of Congo, are renowned for their polyphonic and polyrhythmic music culture (Lewis, 2013). Studying music cognition with a group distinct from WEIRD societies (Heinrich et al., 2010) and using their own music within a gamified paradigm, not only enhances the ecological validity of dimensional salience research but also contributes to a broader, more generalizable understanding of this topic.
Aim
This study aims to examine the relative salience of spectral and temporal information in music recognition by applying culturally familiar music and an engaging gamified experimental paradigm—TuneTwins (Li et al., 2023), an auditory equivalent of the matching pairs card game Memory.
Methods
Thirty-four individuals participated in the study (19 females; M = 17.1 years, SD = 6.6, range = 8–36 years). We selected eight excerpts from the BaYaka musical repertoire for ecological validity. Each excerpt was degraded into two levels (D1: less degraded, D2: more degraded) of either the spectral or temporal domain independently using the joint time–frequency scattering transform (Andén et al., 2019). Each game involves matching eight pairs of short musical excerpts on an electronic tablet. For each pair, participants were asked to match one original and its degraded excerpt, except in the original condition, where both excerpts were identical.
A Bayesian Rasch-type model (Burgoyne et al., 2023) was used to assess how degradations affected match performance. We included random effects — such as location effects, stimuli difficulty, personal ability, learning rate — to separate their effect from primary factor of interest, condition difficulty.
Results
The final data consisted of 412 games (13,406 matching attempts). Compared to the original condition. The D1 conditions were not credibly distinguishable from original condition. The odds of a correct match were reduced by 30% in the Spectral D2 condition (90% CrI: 0.16–0.42) and by 28% in the Temporal D2 condition (90% CrI: 0.13–0.40).
Discussion and conclusion
We found that BaYaka maintained robust music recognition under both spectral and temporal degradations. The magnitude of the impact of severe degradation was only moderate. In addition, we found comparable effects in response to the degradation in the two dimensions.
These findings contribute to ongoing discussions by questioning the extent to which pitch plays a dominant role in music recognition, as previously suggested by studies based on WEIRD populations. Furthermore, our approach underscores the importance of incorporating participants from diverse musical cultures as well as the value of employing ecologically valid stimuli and interactive, gamified tasks in music cognition research.
Pitch and rhythm are two fundamental components of music perception, though pitch is often found to play a more dominant role than rhythm in music recognition. Findings of dimensional salience—certain auditory features stand out more than others—has repeatedly emerged across diverse research paradigms, underscoring its significance in addressing fundamental questions of music perception (White, 1960; Hébert & Peretz, 1997; Albouy et al., 2020). However, many of these studies rely on Western music stimuli and samples, the paradigm also often lacks ecological validity in cross-cultural contexts (Sloboda et al., 2001; Tervaniemi, 2023; Jacoby et al., 2020). The BaYaka Mbendjele, a hunter-gatherer community in the Republic of Congo, are renowned for their polyphonic and polyrhythmic music culture (Lewis, 2013). Studying music cognition with a group distinct from WEIRD societies (Heinrich et al., 2010) and using their own music within a gamified paradigm, not only enhances the ecological validity of dimensional salience research but also contributes to a broader, more generalizable understanding of this topic.
Aim
This study aims to examine the relative salience of spectral and temporal information in music recognition by applying culturally familiar music and an engaging gamified experimental paradigm—TuneTwins (Li et al., 2023), an auditory equivalent of the matching pairs card game Memory.
Methods
Thirty-four individuals participated in the study (19 females; M = 17.1 years, SD = 6.6, range = 8–36 years). We selected eight excerpts from the BaYaka musical repertoire for ecological validity. Each excerpt was degraded into two levels (D1: less degraded, D2: more degraded) of either the spectral or temporal domain independently using the joint time–frequency scattering transform (Andén et al., 2019). Each game involves matching eight pairs of short musical excerpts on an electronic tablet. For each pair, participants were asked to match one original and its degraded excerpt, except in the original condition, where both excerpts were identical.
A Bayesian Rasch-type model (Burgoyne et al., 2023) was used to assess how degradations affected match performance. We included random effects — such as location effects, stimuli difficulty, personal ability, learning rate — to separate their effect from primary factor of interest, condition difficulty.
Results
The final data consisted of 412 games (13,406 matching attempts). Compared to the original condition. The D1 conditions were not credibly distinguishable from original condition. The odds of a correct match were reduced by 30% in the Spectral D2 condition (90% CrI: 0.16–0.42) and by 28% in the Temporal D2 condition (90% CrI: 0.13–0.40).
Discussion and conclusion
We found that BaYaka maintained robust music recognition under both spectral and temporal degradations. The magnitude of the impact of severe degradation was only moderate. In addition, we found comparable effects in response to the degradation in the two dimensions.
These findings contribute to ongoing discussions by questioning the extent to which pitch plays a dominant role in music recognition, as previously suggested by studies based on WEIRD populations. Furthermore, our approach underscores the importance of incorporating participants from diverse musical cultures as well as the value of employing ecologically valid stimuli and interactive, gamified tasks in music cognition research.
References
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