Crespo-Bojorque Paola, Toro Juan M
Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
J Comp Psychol. 2016 May;130(2):97-108. doi: 10.1037/com0000027. Epub 2016 Apr 14.
Consonance is a salient perceptual feature in harmonic music associated with pleasantness. Besides being deeply rooted in how we experience music, research suggests consonant intervals are more easily processed than dissonant intervals. In the present work we explore from a comparative perspective if such processing advantage extends to more complex tasks such as the detection of abstract rules. We ran experiments on rule learning over consonant and dissonant intervals with nonhuman animals and human participants. Results show differences across species regarding the extent to which they benefit from differences in consonance. Animals learn abstract rules with the same ease independently of whether they are implemented over consonant intervals (Experiment 1), dissonant intervals (Experiment 2), or over a combination of them (Experiment 3). Humans, on the contrary, learn an abstract rule better when it is implemented over consonant (Experiment 4) than over dissonant intervals (Experiment 5). Moreover, their performance improves when there is a mapping between abstract categories defining a rule and consonant and dissonant intervals (Experiments 6 and 7). Results suggest that for humans, consonance might be used as a perceptual anchor for other cognitive processes as to facilitate the detection of abstract patterns. Lacking extensive experience with harmonic stimuli, nonhuman animals tested here do not seem to benefit from a processing advantage for consonant intervals. (PsycINFO Database Record
协和音是和声音乐中与愉悦感相关的一个显著感知特征。除了深深植根于我们体验音乐的方式之外，研究表明协和音程比不协和音程更容易被处理。在本研究中，我们从比较的角度探讨这种处理优势是否会扩展到更复杂的任务，比如抽象规则的检测。我们对非人类动物和人类参与者进行了关于协和音程和不协和音程规则学习的实验。结果表明，不同物种从协和性差异中受益的程度存在差异。动物学习抽象规则的难易程度与规则是通过协和音程（实验1）、不协和音程（实验2）还是它们的组合（实验3）来实现无关。相反，人类在协和音程上实现抽象规则时（实验4）比在不协和音程上（实验5）学得更好。此外，当定义规则的抽象类别与协和音程和不协和音程之间存在映射关系时（实验6和7），他们的表现会有所提高。结果表明，对于人类来说，协和音可能被用作其他认知过程的感知锚点，以促进抽象模式的检测。由于缺乏对和声刺激的广泛体验，这里测试的非人类动物似乎没有从协和音程的处理优势中受益。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
