Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The voice is a biologically significant and spectrally rich signal that plays a critical role in communication and social engagement throughout life. Nevertheless, music cognition and perception research does not typically use vocal music as stimuli, opting instead for timbres that are easier to manipulate and control (e.g., digital instruments). The evolutionary and ontogenetic significance of the voice are among the reasons to expect distinctive and favored processing of vocal music. The single previous comparison of memory for vocal and instrumental melodies revealed superior recognition of vocal melodies and no differences among various instrumental renditions (Weiss, Trehub, Schellenberg, 2012). This dissertation explores various facets of the â vocal memory advantageâ by (1) testing additional populations of listeners (children, Brazilian musicians and nonmusicians), (2) using physiological (pupil dilation) as well as behavioral responses, (3) examining the implications of divided attention (a concurrent task), and (4) confirming the generality of the findings across male and female vocalists. Children between 7 and 11 years of age remembered vocal melodies better than instrumental renditions, but younger children had poorer overall memory and were biased to judge vocal melodies as familiar. Brazilian musicians and nonmusicians displayed a similar memory advantage for vocal melodies, and expert pianists remembered piano melodies no better than other instrumental melodies. Listeners exhibited enhanced arousal for vocal melodies relative to piano melodies and for melodies heard previously than for novel melodies, as reflected in greater pupil dilation. Conditions of divided attention revealed greater attention allocation to vocal melodies than to piano melodies, as reflected in modestly greater impairment on a concurrent visual task during vocal melody presentation. Finally, the memory advantage was comparable for the original female vocalist used in Weiss et al. (2012) and two new vocalistsâ one female, and one male. Collectively, the research in this dissertation provides definitive evidence that musical timbres are unequal in their consequences for music perception and cognition. Specifically, vocal and instrumental melodies have differential effects on arousal, attention, and memory.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Michael W. Weiss
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2723253122