Integer Ratio Priors on Musical Rhythm Revealed Cross-culturally by Iterated Reproduction
Integer Ratio Priors on Musical Rhythm Revealed Cross-culturally by Iterated Reproduction
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.031
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发表时间：
2017-02-06
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
McDermott, Josh H.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jacoby, Nod;McDermott, Josh H.
外部状态（先验）的概率分布对于解释感觉信号至关重要。音乐和语言等文化产物的先验在很大程度上仍然没有特征化，但可能会限制文化传播，因为只有那些在先验下概率很高的信号才能可靠地复制和传播。我们开发了一种方法来估计先验简单的节奏通过迭代再现随机时间序列。听众被要求再现随机的“种子”节奏;他们的再现被反馈为刺激，随着时间的推移，内部偏差占主导地位，因此可以通过多次应用该程序来估计先验。我们验证了测量的先验是一致的整个模式的再现，它正确地预测知觉歧视。然后，我们在整个两个和三个音程节奏的空间内测量了听众的先验知识。美国参与者的先验表现出简单整数比的节奏峰值，音乐家和非音乐家相似。一个类似的过程产生了质的不同的结果口语短语，表明音乐的一些特异性。亚马逊土著社会成员的先验测量与美国参与者不同，但也具有整数比峰值。结果并不排除有利于整数比的生物学约束，但他们认为，音乐节奏的先验基本上是由经验调制的，可能只是反映了听众遇到的节奏的经验分布。所提出的方法可以有效地绘制出高分辨率的偏见视图，这些偏见塑造了文化中简单可重复模式的传播和稳定性。
Probability distributions over external states (priors) are essential to the interpretation of sensory signals. Priors for cultural artifacts such as music and language remain largely uncharacterized, but likely constrain cultural transmission, because only those signals with high probability under the prior can be reliably reproduced and communicated. We developed a method to estimate priors for simple rhythms via iterated reproduction of random temporal sequences. Listeners were asked to reproduce random "seed" rhythms; their reproductions were fed back as the stimulus and over time became dominated by internal biases, such that the prior could be estimated by applying the procedure multiple times. We validated that the measured prior was consistent across the modality of reproduction and that it correctly predicted perceptual discrimination. We then measured listeners' priors over the entire space of two- and three-interval rhythms. Priors in US participants showed peaks at rhythms with simple integer ratios and were similar for musicians and non-musicians. An analogous procedure produced qualitatively different results for spoken phrases, indicating some specificity to music. Priors measured in members of a native Amazonian society were distinct from those in US participants but also featured integer ratio peaks. The results do not preclude biological constraints favoring integer ratios, but they suggest that priors on musical rhythm are substantially modulated by experience and may simply reflect the empirical distribution of rhythm that listeners encounter. The proposed method can efficiently map out a high-resolution view of biases that shape transmission and stability of simple reproducible patterns within a culture.