BA, Oberlin College, 2012, Psychology

Spatial cognition has been implicated in the perception and production of music within both behavioral and neurological experimental paradigms. Using performance on mental rotation of a three-dimensional object, the present study examined the visuo-spatial abilities of conservatory and non-conservatory students. Participants performed the rotation task under no distraction followed by performance with an interference task, which consisted of detecting either tempo or pitch changes. Conservatory students performed better on the mental rotation task both with and without interference. Musical structure (Western classical versus Indian classical) and musical aspect (tempo changes and pitch changes) influenced how much interference was produced in the mental rotation task. The results confirm the relation between music cognition and spatial cognition with the complexity introduced by the musical structure itself.

Committee: Patricia deWinstanley (Advisor); Arnie Cox (Committee Member); Al Porterfield (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Behavioral Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Experiments; Music; Psychological Tests; Psychology; Quantitative Psychology

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Music Education

The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of the Pitch-Height Stroop Test, a novel measure of implicit psychological association between pitch and multiple dimensions of the construct of height, and to explore potential relationships between its linguistic dimension, its perceptual dimension, and music reading ability. The Pitch-Height Stroop Test (PHST) is a response time measure that includes four tasks: a baseline pitch classification task, an auditory pitch-word Stroop-like task, an auditory-visual pitch-location Stroop-like task, and an auditory-visual pitch-text Stroop-like task. In each of the Stroop-like tasks, participants indicate the pitch of a tone by pressing a corresponding button while ignoring a simultaneously presented indicator of linguistic or visuospatial height, which may or may not be congruent with the pitch. English-speaking adult singers (n = 50) completed the PHST as well as a demographic and musical background questionnaire, the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS) pitch and melody subtests, an Erikson flanker task, and the Vocal Sight-Reading Inventory. This battery of measures enabled determination of the PHST's validity and reliability and examination of relationships between variables. Results indicated that the PHST was a valid and reliable measure for this population for purposes of group-level analysis. Magnitudes of pitch-height cross-modal correspondence as measured by the three Stroop-like tasks appeared to reflect differences between unisensory and cross-sensory processing and showed moderate correlation between its linguistic and perceptual forms. Regression analysis indicated that perceptual pitch-height cross-modal correspondence was a positive predictor of sight-singing fluency, contributing approximately 10% of the sight-singing score variance. Meanwhile, linguistic pitch-height cross-modal correspondence did not appear to contribute to sight-singing fluency. Correlation with musical background variab (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ryan Scherber (Committee Chair); Nathan Kruse (Committee Member); Lisa Koops (Committee Member); Robert Greene (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Music; Music Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Music History

This dissertation examines the social contexts for music livestreams, in order to lay the groundwork for future studies of both livestreaming as a whole and individual case studies. No frameworks currently exist for analyzing music livestreams. Although the technologies of livestreaming have been evolving over the past few decades, there have been no organized or successful attempts to standardize the ways we understand and study this fast-growing medium for music performance. Chapter 1 provides basic definitions of livestreaming, and then emphasizes the framework of liveness, arguing that although livestreaming technologies developed relatively recently, the practice of transmitting and receiving live music has been developing since the late-nineteenth century. I examine livestreaming as a continuation of broadcast media wrapped up with conceptions of liveness that have been constantly transforming over the long twentieth century. Chapter 2 connects livestreaming with the social media platforms that have emerged in the past two decades. I also position livestreaming within discussions and anxieties surrounding attention and distraction in the context of digital media. In Chapter 3 the discussion of attention extends into the realm of joint attention, and the ways livestreaming engages our attentive capacities in groups to facilitate specific modalities of participation—observational, reactive, and generative. Finally, the conclusion pulls these frameworks together to demonstrate their use in an analysis of music livestreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the patterns of behavior and audience engagement, conceptions of liveness during the pandemic, and the effects of these factors on the social aspects of live music.

Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor); Francesca Brittan (Committee Member); Georgia Cowart (Committee Member); Vera Tobin (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Music; Performing Arts; Psychology; Recreation; Sociology

BM, Kent State University, 2023, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

In 1830, music critic, Ludwig Rellstab, described the opening movement of Beethoven's Op. 27, No. 2 as “a boat, visiting, by moonlight, the wild places of the Viervaldsee in Switzerland” (Waltz, 2007). Using figurative language to describe the perceptual experience of music is a phenomenon musicologists, critics, and pedagogues practice fluently. Yet, how can any music listener accurately interpret that a piece of music sounds like moonlight? And how can any linguistic description evoke sound without hearing it? Since the Baroque Era and the development of the Doctrine of Affectations, researchers have argued the affects music can induce on the audience, primarily based on a lens model approach. However, what is less clear is how we use figurative language to describe music outside of pure emotion. This three-part study explores the relationship between figurative language and musical expression in relation to the wider discussion of encoding and decoding acoustical cues. In the first study, a corpus of 2,780 metaphors collected from 19th century music periodicals revealed that 19th century music critics used mostly personifying metaphors, followed by synesthetic metaphors and extended imagery, among numerous subcategories. The second study observed how words are acoustically defined by giving five words (cold, dark, lively, mournful, and tender) from the previous corpus study to instrumentalists to perform with five given excerpts. Results revealed significant acoustical effects of duration, articulation, and timbre (sans piano), but no significant effect of dynamics. Finally, the third study looked at whether participants could accurately perceive the intended musical expression. Results indicated that participants (mostly nonmusicians) were significantly able to interpret the intended expression, although individual features like instrument and excerpt affected ratings. These results carry cross-disciplinary and practical implications in music, psychology, and l (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joshua Albrecht (Advisor); Wendy Matthews (Committee Member); Phillip Hamrick (Committee Member); Ed Dauterich (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Music; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Music

This dissertation argues that gesture facilitates musical understanding. Gesture does this by mediating the relationship between music producers and music perceivers. Music producers are the ones making music, and through gesture, bring aspects of the musical structure to the musical surface. Music perceivers are those who view the gestures and can then pick up aspects of the musical surface. In making the case for this relationship, I 1) conduct an experiment that shows that musicians with a diatonic preference can take away musically meaningful information from gesture, 2) build a corpus of gesture in music so that I may test several hypotheses on gesture, and 3) apply these findings to music analysis.

Committee: Daniel Shanahan (Advisor); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member); David Clampitt (Committee Member); Jonathan De Souza (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

This dissertation explores the relationship between guitar performance and the functional components of musical organization in popular-music songs from 1954 to 2019. Under an ecological theory of affordances, three distinct interdisciplinary approaches are employed: empirical analyses of two stylistically contrasting databases of popular-music song transcriptions, a motion-capture study of performances by practicing musicians local to Columbus, Ohio, and close readings of works performed and/or composed by popular-music guitarists. Each offers gestural analyses that provide an alternative to the object-oriented approach of standard popular-music analysis, as well as clarification on issues related to style, such as the socially determined differences between “pop” and “rock” music.

Committee: Anna Gawboy Dr. (Committee Chair); Nicole Biamonte Dr. (Advisor); Daniel Shanahan Dr. (Advisor); David Clampitt Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

This dissertation presents empirical investigations of the cognitive linguistics of musical instrument timbre qualia and explores applications of these results to musical analysis. First, interviews and rating tasks, based on imagined instrument timbres, are used to build a 20-dimensional model of timbre qualia. The final model includes the dimensions airy/breathy, brassy/metallic, direct/loud, focused/compact, hollow, muted/veiled, nasal/reedy, open, percussive, pure/clear, raspy/grainy, resonant/vibrant, ringing/long decay, rumbling/low, shrill/noisy, soft/singing, sparkling/brilliant, sustained/even, watery/fluid, and woody. Further analysis of the interview transcripts and comparison with previous studies in timbre semantics suggests five primary response strategies for describing timbre: Adjectival description, Qualia-metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Mimesis, and Association. Next, the 20-dimensional model is used in a rating task to generate Timbre Trait Profiles for 34 Western orchestral instruments. These profiles contain ratings for each of the 20 dimensions and are intended for use in musical analysis. Timbre varies not only from instrument to instrument, but also within instruments due to the manipulation of parameters such as pitch, intensity, and articulation. Accordingly, timbral variations with pitch/register and dynamics are mapped for two instruments, the oboe and the French horn, using rating tasks. While some shared trends in dimension variance are observed between the two instruments (e.g. ratings of rumbling/low increase as pitch decreases), much of the timbral variation is apparently idiosyncratic, as is the amount of variation for each instrument on a given dimension. Next, three studies are reported investigating the relationship between timbre linguistics and cross-modal matching of instrumental timbre to color. Participants' ratings of timbres on the cross-modal terms high, low, bright, dark, small, big, light (in weight), heavy, happy, and sad (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Shanahan (Advisor); David Huron (Committee Member); Zachary Wallmark (Committee Member); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member); David Clampitt (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Music

Music, perhaps more than any other art form, is able to influence moods and affect behavior. There are limitless accounts of music eliciting feelings of nostalgia, transcendence, and other seemingly ineffable emotions. In the scientific study of music and emotion, however, only five music-induced emotions have been studied in depth: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and tenderness (Juslin, 2013). Although these emotions are certainly important and can be expressed and elicited through music listening, a pertinent question becomes the following: do these five words accurately capture all affective states related to music? Throughout my dissertation, I argue that in order to better understand emotional responses to musical stimuli, we need to change the way we use emotional terminology and examine emotional behaviors. In the first part of the dissertation (Chapters 1-4), I review how emotional music has been theoretically characterized and which excerpts have been utilized in research. I will show that the field of music and emotion is fraught with conceptual difficulties and that passages of music expressing a single emotion (e.g., sadness) span an unmanageably large area of emotional space. The second part of the dissertation (Chapters 5-8) provides an in-depth analysis of music that has been classified by other researchers as sad. I will show that previous research has conflated at least two separable emotional states under the umbrella term sadness: melancholy and grief. Through a series of behavioral experiments, I argue that melancholic and grief-like music utilize different kinds of music-theoretic structures, are perceived as separate emotional states, and result in different feeling states. In the last part of the dissertation (Chapters 9-11), I offer two possible interpretations of the research findings, drawing first from the field of ethology to show that melancholy and grief could be separable emotion states that have different biological functions and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Shanahan (Advisor); David Huron (Committee Member); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member); Dónal O’Mathúna (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Music; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Music

All texts, including musical scores, require some amount of interpretation by the reader. When a musician learns a new piece, they have to make choices about how the music written on their score is supposed to sound. There are many complex motivations behind expressive performance choices based on intuition, convention, convenience, artistic intention, and more. Each expressive choice impacts the way the performance is ultimately received. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the document including a brief discussion of what “expressive performance choice” means. Chapters 2 and 3 describe two research projects that investigate two areas of expressive musical choice. Specifically, Chapter 2 describes research carried out to determine the effect of the amount of performer movement on judgments of performance quality. The movements of eight live solo performances were captured. From each original recording, three stick figure animations were created: one with augmented performance motion, one with the original motion, and one with diminished motion. The three animations were combined into single dynamic videos that allowed participants to continuously adjust the range of motion in the animation via a slider—from diminished through original to augmented motion. Participants were instructed to adjust the overall amount of performance motion to create the best musical performance. Consistent with the hypothesis, participants elected to significantly exaggerate the motions of the performers. Chapter 3 presents research conducted to investigate an expressive choice regarding fingering decisions for classical string players. Speakers tend to use a higher vocal register when experiencing a highly emotional state. A three-part study was conducted to investigate whether string players might mimic this vocal cue by playing in the upper register of a low string (instead of the lower register of a high string) to play more expressively. The study produced a complicated pattern of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Huron (Advisor); David Clampitt (Committee Member); Mark Rudoff (Committee Member) Subjects: Acoustics; Behavioral Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Experiments; Multimedia Communications; Music; Music Education; Pedagogy; Performing Arts

BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Psychology

Perception of beat and meter is a nearly universal human skill that requires little to no conscious effort. However, the extent to which music training influences this perception in the brain remains unknown. Music performance requires high sensitivity to timing and physical entrainment to external auditory stimuli. Additionally, compared to untrained individuals, musicians show higher performance on a number of auditory and speech tasks, as well as different brain morphology and fiber connections. Beat and meter perception are thought to be subtended by oscillations of groups of neurons at corresponding frequencies. Here, electroencephalography (EEG) was used to examine the magnitude of neuronal entrainment to beat and meter in individuals with high or low levels of music training. EEG signals were recorded while participants attended to a musical beat, and then imagined a binary or ternary meter over that beat. Beat-keeping ability was also assessed using a synchronous tapping task. A strong EEG signal was observed selectively at beat and meter frequencies, indicating entrainment across participants. No differences in the magnitude of entrainment were observed based on level of music training or beat-keeping ability. These results suggest that music training may not influence beat and meter perception at the level of neural networks and that entrainment could be innate. Broadly, results provide a foundation for further research into whether entrainment has evolutionary significance.

Committee: Albert L. Porterfield (Advisor); Patrick Simen (Committee Member); Sara Verosky (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Music; Neurosciences; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

Based on data from two years of fieldwork in Nigeria, a new methodology for contour analysis is presented with two motivations: 1) extend contour theory into an applied computational approach appropriate for a wide range of symbolic and recorded music; 2) develop a new discretization of pitch, similar to solmization but without an association to a scale or tonal qualia, that can be used to measure pitch prominence (or markedness) in both music and speech. As an alternative to the conventional contour matrix for a segment of cardinality n which compares pitches at all degrees of adjacency up to n-1, a continuous matrix is introduced, with unspecified cardinality and a fixed number of degrees of adjacency. The continuous matrix is a series of contour slices. Each slice compares a pitch to the pitch before and after up to the degrees of adjacency. The elements in each contour slice (a column in the continuous matrix) can be summed creating a measure of relative pitch height, a contour level. The analysis implementation is based on a relationship between contour recursion and segmentation of pitch series. Thematic unity, as provided by contour recursion, is presumed to be intentional on the part of the producer and salient to the receiver. Non-overlapping iterations of a highly recursive contour are both semiotically and structurally important in a wide variety of monophonic signals. The analysis is made more robust by searching for transformations and using reductive processes that make it possible to compare segments of different cardinalities. Contour level analysis is applied to the phenomenon of “tone-and-tune”, wherein a single pitch series carries both linguistic and musical or paralinguistic communication. First the concept of a toneme (a pitch contrast in speech) is explored. Phoneticians and phonologists have described the toneme with paradigmatic (context-independent) and syntagmatic (context-dependent) features, but neither seems to satisfactorily (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Clampitt (Advisor); David Huron (Committee Member); Udo Will (Committee Member) Subjects: Acoustics; African Studies; Linguistics; Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

Musicians commonly regard the human voice as a model for emotional expressiveness. Similarly, modern psychological research suggests that the human voice offers a useful model for understanding how sounds represent or convey emotions (e.g. Juslin & Sloboda, 2011). This thesis reports on three studies, each of which is inspired by different features of vocal emotion. That is, the three studies investigate whether instrumental music exhibits or emulates these features. Study 1 was motivated by the observation that a darker timbre is an acoustical characteristic of sad voice (Scherer, Johnstone & Klasmeyer, 2003). Given that open strings generate a brighter timbre than stopped strings (Schelleng, 1973), composers writing nominally sad music might choose keys and notes that prohibit the use of open strings. Specifically, the proportion of potentially-open-to-stopped strings was compared between a sample of slow minor-mode movements and matched major-mode movements. Study 2 was inspired by certain acoustical characteristics of laughter. First, to verify the possibility of hearing laughter from an instrument other than voice, participants adjusted the speed and duty cycle of looped tones to produce the most laughter-like sound. Next, the study examined whether the acoustical characteristics of laughter appear in real music by comparing amounts of staccato and rhythmically isochronous passages found in musical compositions of a comedic genre (humoresques, badineries, and Scherzos) and in similar-tempo works by the same composers. Study 3 was motivated by the observation that high emotionality (e.g. fear, rage, excitement) often results in speaking within the upper pitch register (Scherer et al., 2003). To be able to identify pitch register, one must know the range of the speaking voice, something that research indicates humans can accurately perceive (Honorof & Whalen, 2005). The study first tested whether range information is similarly perceptible for instruments, specifi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Huron (Advisor); Marc Ainger (Committee Member); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Music

The most common method for measuring melodic expectancy is the “probe-tone” design, which relies on a retrospective report of expectancy. Here a direct measure of expectancy is introduced, one that uses a speeded, serial categorization task. An analysis of the reaction time data showed that “Implication-Realization” contour models of melodic expectancy provide a good fit. Further analysis suggests that some assumptions of these contour models may not be valid. The traditional “key profile” model of tonality was not found to contribute significantly to the model. Following Krumhansl's (1990) argument that tonality is learned from the statistical distribution of scale degrees, a tonality model based on the actual probability of scale degrees did significantly improve the fit of the model. It is proposed that the probe-tone method for measuring key profiles encourages listeners to treat the probe tone as being in phrase-final position. Indeed, the key profile was found to be much more similar to the distribution of phrase-final notes than to the distribution of all melodic notes. A second experiment measured reaction times to notes that subjects expected to be phrase-final. In this experiment the key profile contributed significantly to the fit of the model. It is concluded that the probe-tone design creates a task demand to hear the tone as a phrase-final note, and the key profile reflects a learned sensitivity to the distribution of notes at ends of melodies. The “key profile” produced by the new reaction-time design is apparently related to the general distribution of notes in melodies. The results of this study indicate that the relationship between melodic structure and melodic expectation is more straightforward than has been previously demonstrated. Melodic expectation appears to be related directly to the structure and distribution of events in the music.

Committee: David Huron (Advisor) Subjects: Music; Psychology, Cognitive

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1978, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

Globalization has brought traditional Ghanaian drum-dances to world stages, particularly in institutions of higher education in America. Ethnomusicologists utilize interdisciplinary techniques to trace a music-cultures’ continuation and change. This study compares the transmission process in the cultural context and the instruction of Ghanaian repertoire among African ensembles in American college and universities. The original hypothesis contends that the pedagogy in university African ensembles would be profoundly different from that of the authentic Ghanaian perspective, thereby reinforcing a divergence in music cognition between learners in the two cultures. Part I: Introduction establishes the parameters of the research and provides a brief description of the Ghanaian musical context. The Research Design section provides an explanation of the participant-observer research methodology during my fieldwork in Ghana and the United States, as well as a briefing on the comparative method used between the two cultures. Insight into teaching perspectives and student cognition that resulted from the variables of different pedagogical techniques was gained through observing of multiple university African ensembles in rehearsal and performance. Interviews were conducted and questionnaires were collected for hard data. Features of the music-culture vital to the socialization method and music cognition are addressed, with particular attention given to the intersubjective collectiveness found in nearly every facet of West African life and the emic musical concepts of melorhythm and Ensemble Thematic Cycle (E.T.C.). The bulk of the fieldwork is presented in Part 2: Teaching Techniques and Learning Processes. The first section surveys the teaching and learning perspectives of the traditional socialization methods of the Ghanaian people. The oral method and informal style are clarified and further non-written methods and instances of formality found in certain Ghanaia (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kazadi wa Mukuna PhD (Advisor); Denise Seachrist PhD (Committee Member); Thomas Janson DMA (Committee Member); Halim El-Dabh PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Fine Arts; Multicultural Education; Music; Music Education; Pedagogy; Performing Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Music

This dissertation traces the development between 1890 and 1930 of a French musical trend referred to in the press of the era as debussysme. Based on analysis of over 250 pieces by more than thirty composers, I describe debussysme as a cohesive collection of techniques that emerged in the works of the earliest debussystes, such as Ravel, Debussy, and Florent Schmitt, with aesthetic roots in contemporaneous philosophy of the mind. With Debussy's innovations as a guide, a diverse group of composers embraced techniques that made new perceptual demands of their listeners: I examine these techniques by drawing on research in the field of music cognition. This study deepens our understanding of French musical modernism, of which debussysme was a key stage. A study of debussysme also teaches us about the nature of shared compositional practices: how they are generated, how they are diffused through social channels, and how individuals align themselves with or disavow fashionable usages. I explore the distinct phases of the debussyste movement and the social motivations of the composers who joined it, with the aid of concepts from sociological research on the diffusion of innovations. As the composers associated with debussysme gained prestige in the French musical community and on concert stages, their shared idiom became commercially viable. By 1908 salon composers such as Gabriel Dupont had developed a commodified version of debussysme that offered amateur musicians novel sounds within music that retained familiar structural norms; the development of this “pop debussyste” practice is a case study of how elite innovations are transformed into cultural products that reach broad audiences.

Committee: Danielle Fosler-Lussier PhD (Advisor); David Huron PhD (Committee Member); Arved Ashby PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Music

The human auditory system can rapidly process musical information, including: the recognition and identification of sound sources; the deciphering of meter, tempo, mode, and texture; the processing of lyrics and dynamics; the identification of musical style and genre; the perception of performance nuance; the apprehension of emotional character, etc. Two empirical studies are reported that attempt to chronicle when such information is processed. In the first study, a diverse set of musical excerpts was selected and trimmed to various durations, ranging from 50ms to 3000ms. These samples, beginning with the shortest and ending with the longest, were presented to participants, who were then asked to free associate and talk about any observations that came to mind. Based on these results, a second study was carried out using a betting paradigm to determine the amount of exposure needed for listeners to feel confident about acquired musical information. The results suggest a rapid unfolding of cognitive processes within a three-second listening span.

Committee: David Huron (Committee Chair); Marc Ainger (Committee Member); Lawrence Feth (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2011, Psychology, General

The Two Component Model of Absolute Pitch (Levitin, 1994) claims that Absolute Pitch (AP) can be broken down into two distinct elements: pitch memory and pitch labeling. Previous research suggests that while individuals without AP lack the ability to provide a name or label to specific pitches, they still are able to form a long term memory of those pitches. However, these studies have used overly familiar stimuli (e.g., T.V. themes, favorite songs). This study used less familiar stimuli (i.e., pure tones) in a Mere Exposure paradigm in order to examine whether individuals without AP maintain a representation of pitch in long term memory. Undergraduate students at the University of Dayton were randomly assigned to either a Mere Exposure or Recognition condition. They were first presented with a series of 30 pure tones in which tones were presented 0, 1, 2, 4, or 8 times. Individuals in the Mere Exposure condition were later played the same tones individually and asked to rate how much they liked each tone on a 1-7 scale. The Mere Exposure Effect states that the more one is exposed to a particular stimulus, the more one will like it. Thus, it was expected that tones that were presented more often would be given higher liking ratings. Those in the recognition condition were asked to identify the previously heard tones through a forced choice two-alternative measure. Given that individuals without AP tend to perform poorly on this type of task, it was expected that performance would be at chance levels. Results failed to show a Mere Exposure Effect; liking ratings for tones appeared to be random. Results also indicated that students performed above chance level on the recognition task, contrary to expectations.

Committee: Robert J. Crutcher (Committee Chair); Susan T. Davis (Committee Member); Donald J. Polzella (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Psychology