Processing pitch and temporal structures in music reading: Independent or interactive processing mechanisms?

Music provides a useful domain in which to study how the different attribut es of complex multidimensional stimuli are processed both separately and in combination. Much research has been devoted to addressing how the dimensio n of pitch and time are co-processed in music listening tasks. Neuropsychol ogical studies have provided evidence for a certain degree of independence between pitch and temporal processing, although there are also many experim ental reports favouring interactive models of pitch and temporal processing . Here we extended these investigations by examining the processing of pitc h and temporal structures when music is presented in the visual modality (i .e. in the form of music notation). In two experiments, musician subjects w ere presented with visual musical stimuli containing both pitch and tempora l information for a brief amount of time, and they were subsequently requir ed to recall both the pitch and temporal information. In Experiment 1, we d ocumented that concurrent, unattended, pitch and rhythmic auditory interfer ence stimuli disrupted the recall of pitch, but not time. In Experiment 2, we showed that manipulating the tonal structure of the visual presentation stimuli affected the recall of pitch, but not time. On the other hand, mani pulating the metrical properties of the visual stimuli affected recall of t ime, and pitch to a certain extent. Taken together, these results suggest t hat the processing of pitch is constrained by the processing of time, but t he processing of time is not affected by the processing of pitch. These res ults do not support either strong independence or interactive models of pit ch and temporal processing, but they suggest that the processing of time ca n occur independently from the processing of pitch when performing a writte n recall task.