PHRASING INFLUENCES THE RECOGNITION OF MELODIES

One critical step in the processing of complex auditory information (i .e., language and music) involves organizing such information into hie rarchical units, such as phrases. In this study, musically trained and untrained listeners' recognition memory for short, naturalistic melod ies varying in their phrase structure was tested. For musically traine d subjects, memory for information preceding a phrase boundary was dis rupted and memory for information subsequent to a phrase boundary was enhanced relative to memory in similar temporal locations for excerpts not containing a phrase boundary. Musically untrained Listeners, in c ontrast, showed no such differences as a function of the phrasing of t he melody. These findings conform with previous results in both psycho linguistics and musical cognition and suggest that the phrase serves a s a functional unit in musical processing, guiding the parsing of musi cal sequences during perception, along with the structuring of memory for musical passages.