Music and Memory

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Music and Memory

• Perfecto Herrera
• Music Perception and Cognition

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Multi-storage view

• Echoic Memory
• Short-term or Working Memory
• Long-term Memory (or memories declarative,
  non-declarative, episodic, semantic, procedural,
  etc.)

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Functional view

• Encoding operations
• Echoic Memory
• feature extraction perceptual binding
• STM
• segmentation chunking
• lt-gt Decay of traces
• lt-gt Interference of traces
• LTM
• explicit learning rehearsal
• mnemonics
• implicit learning (learning by exposure)
• consolidation (hypocampus, sleep effect)
• lt-gt Interference and Reconstruction

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• Retrieval operations
• Recollection activation of a LTM encoded pattern
  by a diffuse effort of will
• Reminding activation of a LTM encoded pattern by
  a pattern in STM
• Recognition acknowledgement that a pattern in
  STM is stored in LTM

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The 3 subsystems playing at the same time
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Echoic or Sensory Memory

• Trace that stimuli leave just after the
  transduction
• Probably it is accounted by the connections up to
  the thalamic centres
• It accounts for the basic feature extraction
  (pitch, intensity, onset, noise, harmonic
  pattern, spatial position)
• Extracted features are bounded (what goes with
  what, e. g. a given partial with another one and
  with a fundamental coming all of them from the
  same direction)
• The visual counterpart (iconic memory) is easier
  to experience (for a while look at a highly
  contrasted window scene, then close your eyes and
  keep on looking using your minds eye).
• Active up to 4 seconds, very fast degradation
• Sensory coding (no conceptual or categorical
  coding is available)

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Short-term Memory

• Temporal storage for helping the permanent
  encoding (aka Working Memory)
• It is the grounding of our sensation of
  present, a shifting focus of awareness selects
  what/how much is it processed
• Has limitations capacity (7/-2 items) and time
  (around 10-20 seconds)
• Chunking and rehearsal help to overcome these
  limitations
• The type of processing done to the items affect
  the recoverability of them (i.e. deep or
  semantic processing helps to robustly retrieve
  them whereas surface processing does not)
• Has sensory-specific sub-blocks (for dealing
  with visual-spatial, phonological, pitch
  information)
• Attentional mechanisms modulate what is stored
  in short-term and which type of processing is
  devoted to that

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(Long-term) Memory systems of the brain
(from Squire, 2004)
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Memory structures
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Memory anatomical structures
Forget about the names, just look at the complex
interaction pattern!!!
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Declarative-Non Declarative Memories

• Declarative ( explicit memory)
• Consciously available
• Fast learning, even single-trial
• Non-Declarative ( implicit memory)
• Contents consciously unavailable or
  interferring its development when trying to make
  them conscious (playing an instrument and
  thinking on which movements are required to keep
  on playing -gt Disaster)
• Slow learning
• Automatic once learning has happened (compiled
  knowledge)
• Often modality-specific

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Declarative memory

• What is this note name? Whats the name of the
  piece?
• Episodic memory memory for specific event in
  time (e.g. that performance of Don Giovanni
  that we saw in Vienna)
• Semantic memory memory about things of the
  world, common-sense (e.g., Don Giovanni is an
  Opera by Mozart)
• Both are associative and distributed
• Both are reconstructive (extra info can be
  generated at retrieval time)

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Non-declarative, Procedural memory

• How does the melody go? How should I play this
  phrase with this instrument?
• Procedural knowledge is slowly acquired, usually
  by doing, it is very long-la
• Usually related to sequences of sensory/motor
  representations (e.g., finger movements, notes,
  etc.) -gt Grammars (they define correct
  sequences)
• Difficult to retrieve verbally, often causing
  interference
• After some amount of practice knowledge is
  compiled into big chunks that are not
  accessible to introspection (how the chess expert
  knows the best movement? -gt nothing to do with
  Deep Blue!!!

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Operations in STM Segmenting

• The continuous musical texture is broken into
  shorter sequences using segmentation cues
• -gt Closure and Change detection
• Pauses, silences, stretching of notes
• Instrument changes
• Cadences
• Accents and other metrical elements
• Tendency changes (up-down melody, long-short
  notes, etc)

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Operations in STM Grouping
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Operations in STM Grouping

• Lerdahl Jackendoff grouping well-formedness
  rules and grouping preference rules
  (Generative Theory of Tonal Music)
• Well-formedness rules define (abstract)
  structural descriptions that can be derived from
  the surface structure (a series of hypotheses for
  organizing the musical structure)
• Grouping preference rules define the conditions
  that allow a listener to choose the preferred
  interpretation of the structure from all of the
  possible ones that conform to the well-formedness
  rules (connected to real perceptual events)

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Operations in STM Chunking

• Encoding or consolidation of small groups of
  elements into a compact larger or more abstract
  element, which is then encoded, recognized or
  remembered
• Example Memorize this series of letters
• F-B-I-C-I-A-U-S-A-C-N-N-I-B-M
• You create chunks of 3 letters that go togheter
  in an existing memory
• Musical scales and chords can be used as elements
  that facilitate chunking (you usually do not code
  the individual notes)
• C-E-G-B -gt C major 7
• Cadences
• Similarity and relatedness between the sequential
  elements facilitates chunking

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Pitch-specific short-term memory

• Deutsch
• experiments

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In which condition should we expect more errors?
Pitch-specific short-term memory
What if the interference was like A, B, D, F,
A, C ?
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Serial position effect
Long-term memory effect, if you do not allow
enough time to encode between each item, then the
segment is flat
Recency
Primacy
Probability of recall
Short-term memory effect, if you wait 30 for
retrieving the items, the segment turns flat
Position
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The dynamics of information storage
Substitute visual by auditory
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Interlude (I)

• The problem of perception is initially a problem
  of taxonomy in which the individual animal must
  classify the things of its world () The
  internal taxonomy of perception is adaptive but
  is not necessarily veridical in the sense that it
  is concordant with the descriptions of physics
• Edelman, Neural Darwinism, p. 26

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Interlude (II)

• The animals are divided into (a) belonging to
  the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking
  pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,
  (h) included in the present classification, (i)
  frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very
  fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having
  just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from
  along way off look like flies.Jorge Luis
  Borges,
• The analytical language of John Wilkins

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Interlude (II)

• "It was not only difficult for him to understand
  that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike
  specimens of differing sizes and different forms
  he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at
  three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the
  same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from
  the front)".
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Funes the memorious

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Categorization

• The act of assigning a single response/reaction
  to a series of different inputs from the external
  world -gt A device to cope with the physical
  variability of our analog world
• It cannot be a process of one small portion of
  the nervous system -gt Distributed memory (linking
  sensory, motor, planning, emotion and reward
  subsystems)
• Does it need words?
• Animals show stimulus generalization, which
  requires some form of categorization
• Pre-linguistic babies show stimulus
  generalization too
• Language may act as a second code, in parallel to
  perceptual codes, boosting learning by providing
  a constant feature vector for objects that
  perceptually are not totally identical
• Maybe useful distinction between Perceptual
  learning (automatic) and Conceptual learning
  (linked to language, will, etc.)

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Knowledge structures Categories

• A group of nonidentical objects or events that an
  individual treats as equivalent
• Equivalent could mean
• Their internal representations are similar or
  close
• They generate similar behaviours (avoidance /
  approach)
• They generate similar internal states (e.g.
  emotions) (pleasure / pain)
• Categorization reduces the overwhelming
  complexity of the natural world (frequencies -gt
  notes, timbres -gt instruments)
• Static knowledge structure for representing
  facts and hierarchical relationships between them

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Knowledge structures Categories

• Categories can be perceptual (learned
  implicitly, culture-independent) or conceptual
  (learnt explicitly, hence verbalizable)
• Categories have properties or features that
  define the belongingness of an object to them
• Musical categories note (as event vs. other
  sound events), note (as pitched event), source,
  rhythm pattern, notated duration (black,
  quaver), key, mode, chord, genre
• Different categorization models (prototype-based,
  exemplar-based, etc.)

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Models of categorization

• Classical theory Categories are defined by
  enumerable properties (rule-based classification)
• Example-based Categories are defined
  (implicitly) by the exemplars belonging to them
  (K-NN classification)
• Prototype-based Categories are represented by a
  prototype that averages the properties of all the
  instances belonging to the category (Gaussian
  mixture models)
• Boundary-based Categories are represented by the
  boundaries that separate their respective
  instances (Support Vector Machines)

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• Black and white dots are different sounds,
  defined by 2 formants
• P is the prototype of white category, NP the
  prototype of black
• Consider how the marked dots would be classified
  according to prototype and instance-based models

?
?
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Categorical perception

• Tendency to perceive stimuli as falling into
  discrete categories rather than in terms of
  smooth gradients
• Color, Speech sounds
• Music pitches, interval sizes, rhythmic
  categories

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Categorical perception of musical
intervals(Burns Campbell, 1994)
Category centres familiar tuning (equal
temperament)
Task tell if the following 2 tones are a second,
fifth, seventh, etc.

• Heightened discrimination near category boundary

Stimuli Melodic intervals of complex tones
Participants Musicians Question Which of 24
categories (quarter tones)?
Percent of judgments

• Just noticeable difference (JND) is smaller at
  boundary

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Melodic categories tuning systems, scales,
pitches

• Tuning systems reduce the variety of audible
  frequencies into a small amount of classes to be
  discriminated
• Scales are subpopulations of a tuning system
  that allow pitch information to be managed under
  the constraints of our memories (lt7 pitches
  considered)
• Scales provide a framework to admit pitch
  nuances and small mistunings as instances of the
  learned categories (categorical perception at
  play here!) -gt but poor recall of them as they
  are usually not encoded as such!!!

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Knowledge structures Schemata
3 different melodic schemata, based on Meyer
(1958)

• Dynamic knowledge structures
• Organized set of knowledge about event sequences,
  spatial and temporal combinations of elements
• Help to recognize and to code a series of events
  or objects
• They also guide the performance of musical
  behaviors
• Basis for the elaboration of prediction of
  musical events (e.g., tonal schemata, predicting
  the appearance of the tonic in certain metrical
  positions, for longer durations, etc.)

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Recovering declarative knowledge from memory (I)

• Recollection cueing of a memory intentionally
  (tell me names of dodecaphonic composers)
• Reminding cueing of a memory unintentionally
  (something we perceive makes other memory to pop
  up, e.g. thinking on Beethoven reminds you about
  Vienna by means of having visited his house
  there-)
• Recognition an item acts as its own cue (we
  realize that the item is in our long term
  memory, e.g. listening to a pattern of 4 specific
  notes (G-G-G-E) we recognize Beethovens Fifth
  Symphony)

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Recovering declarative knowledge from memory (II)

• Priming is a way of implicitly testing LTM
  (because of the associative character of LTM)
• Reading She sings a song makes the word music
  more readily available that the word socks
  (i.e. reaction time to recognition of music as
  a word is faster)
• Listening to a melody using 4 notes from a major
  scale makes another note from that scale more
  readily available or detectable than those that
  are not (less errors, shorter reaction times)

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