Cognitive Psychological Studies on Implicit Memory for Music Information

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The purpose of this project was to elucidate the characteristics of implicit memory for music information. For this purpose, we did the experiments of repetition priming for musical chord and melody, as well as those for visual information, in order to compare visual and auditory repetition priming. Repetition priming refers to the facilitation of processing when the same stimulus is presented in advance, which is considered as the measure of implicit memory.First, we examined repetition priming for visually presented Kanji, pseudo-, and non-Kanji stimuli. Lexical decision task was administered as implicit memory task, The results showed that repetition priming for Kanji was observed but not for pseudo-, and non-Kanji, and that the change of the size of repeated stimuli (prime and target) didn't influenced the repetition priming. Usually, implicit memory is considered including perceptual information, however, these results don't necessarily support this notion. Instead, it suggests that the implicit memory for visual information may have some abstract information but isn't literal perceptual.Second, repetition priming for musical chord was examined using major-minor decision as implicit memory task. The results showed repetition priming for chord, and that the change of timbre between repeated chords didn't influenced the repetition priming. These results suggests that the perceptual information as timber may not play a crucial role in implicit memory for chord.Third, implicit memory for melody was investigated using the detection task of deviated tone as implicit memory task.Repetition priming was observed only for tonal melody but not for atonal melody. This finding suggested that repetition priming for melody might share the information from melody schema.To summarize, this project made it clear that implicit memory for music doesn't have a perceptual information of stimulus itself, but some abstract information as music schema.