Some influences of accent structure on melody recognition

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the roles of joint accent structure and familiarity in delayed recognition of relatively long tonal melodies. Melodic themes of target melodies were defined by correlating contour-related pitch accents with temporal accents (accent coupling) during an initial familiarization phase. Later, subjects gave recognition responses to key-transposed versions of the target melodies as well as to decoys withsame anddifferent contour accent patterns. In Experiment 1, all to-be-recognized melodies occurred both in an original rhythm, which preserved accent coupling, and in a new rhythm, which did not. Listeners were best at distinguishing targets fromdifferent decoys, especially in the original rhythm. In Experiment 2, the familiarity of target tunes and the rhythmic similarity in recognition were varied.Similar rhythms preserved accent coupling, whereasdissimilar rhythms did not. Listeners were most adept in distinguishing familiar targets fromdifferent decoys (Experiment 2A), particularly when they appeared in novel but similar rhythms. However, insimilar rhythm conditions, listeners also frequently mistooksame decoys for targets. With less familiar targets (Experiment 2B), these effects were attenuated, and performance showed general effects of pitch contour.