UC Irvine

This dissertation investigates the sources of musical scale-sensitivity, or the sensitivity to musical mode. In Chapter 1, I introduce the concept of scale-sensitivity, the tone-scramble "3-task" paradigm that can be used to measure this skill, and the open questions surrounding the bimodal distribution of scale-sensitivity in the general population. In Chapter 2, I investigate whether the temporal structure of tone-scramble stimuli influences scale-sensitivity. By manipulating the speed and the grouping of tones in the stimuli, I find that inserting regular, brief rests into the tone sequences heightens sensitivity to musical mode, and that specific note sequences can strongly bias listeners to perceive a stimulus as one type over another. In Chapter 3, I investigate whether scale-sensitivity is related to sensitivity to speech prosody. I find evidence that scale-sensitivity and speech sensitivity may depend on shared processing resources that are largely unaffected by musical training. In Chapter 4, I explore the relationship between scale-sensitivity and pitch-difference threshold by testing listeners in variations of a pitch comparison task. I find that having a pitch-difference threshold below 50 cents on a roved pitch comparison task is required to achieve high scale-sensitivity. Finally, in Chapter 5, I discuss the implications of these findings on music and emotion perception and present next steps in continuing to understand the source of scale-sensitivity.