FAMILIARITY, AGE ACQUISITION AND VERBAL A SSOCIATIONS

The objective of the present study was to establish estimates of famil iarity, of age of acquisition, and of verbal associations in relation to 144 musical excerpts drawn from the repertoire of tunes that is exp ected to be shared by all French-speaking Quebec university students. The excerpts were synthesized monophonic lines (which can be found in Appendix B) that were tape recorded. A first group of 60 university st udents were required to indicate their degree of familiarity (on a 5-p oint scale) with each excerpt and the age period at which they learned the excerpt. A second group of 60 students indicated whether the orig inal tune was vocal or instrumental as well as the first words that ca me to mind. In each group, half the subjects were presented with the 1 44 excerpts in a different order. Overall, the material was found to b e highly familiar and to have been mostly learned between the ages of 5 and 15. Most of the excerpts were easily categorized as vocal or ins trumental with the exception of 26 excerpts, which were accordingly cl assified as ambiguous. Finally, 57% of the excerpts elicited verbal re sponses. There was a high level of agreement in some of the verbal res ponses provided, referred to as dominant responses. In contrast, 21 ex cerpts gave rise to very little verbal recall, hence specifying a subs et of ''purely'' musical material. All indices of familiarity, of acqu isition age, and of verbal responses (specifying the overall rate of v erbal responding, the content of the dominant response as well as its frequency of occurrence) are provided for each excerpt in Appendix A. Finally, the most interesting aspect of the present study was revealed by the analysis of the errors in verbal recall. Subjects tended to fi ll in missing elements by words that fitted the meaning of song lyrics as well as the temporal structure of the music. For instance, instead of providing ''MON BEAU SAPIN'', subjects would provide ''mon grand s apin''. The use of such a procedure is consistent with the notion that music serves as a memory aid which facilitates the communication of n ews and ideas.