Miles Scott A, Rosen David S, Barry Shaun, Grunberg David, Grzywacz Norberto
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, United States.
Secret Chord Laboratories, Norfolk, VA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Apr 30;15:578644. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.578644. eCollection 2021.
Previous work demonstrates that music with more chords tends to be perceived as more enjoyable than music with more conventional harmonic structures. In that work, harmonic surprise was computed based upon a static distribution of chords. This would assume that harmonic surprise is constant over time, and the effect of harmonic surprise on music preference is similarly static. In this study we assess that assumption and establish that the relationship between harmonic surprise (as measured according to a specific time period) and music preference is not constant as time goes on. Analyses of harmonic surprise and preference from 1958 to 1991 showed increased harmonic surprise over time, and that this increase was significantly more pronounced in preferred songs. Separate analyses showed similar increases over the years from 2000 to 2019. As such, these findings provide evidence that the human perception of tonality is influenced by exposure. Baseline harmonic expectations that were developed through listening to the music of "yesterday" are violated in the music of "today," leading to preference. Then, once the music of "today" provides the baseline expectations for the music of "tomorrow," more pronounced violations-and with them, higher harmonic surprise values-become associated with preference formation. We call this phenomenon the "Inflationary-Surprise Hypothesis." Support for this hypothesis could impact the understanding of how the perception of tonality, and other statistical regularities, are developed in the human brain.
先前的研究表明，和弦较多的音乐往往比具有更传统和声结构的音乐更令人愉悦。在该研究中，和声惊喜是基于和弦的静态分布来计算的。这意味着和声惊喜在时间上是恒定的，并且和声惊喜对音乐偏好的影响同样是静态的。在本研究中，我们评估了这一假设，并确定随着时间的推移，和声惊喜（根据特定时间段来衡量）与音乐偏好之间的关系并非恒定不变。对1958年至1991年期间的和声惊喜和偏好进行分析后发现，随着时间的推移，和声惊喜有所增加，而且这种增加在受欢迎的歌曲中更为明显。单独的分析表明，2000年至2019年期间也有类似的增长。因此，这些发现提供了证据，证明人类对调性的感知受到接触的影响。通过聆听“过去”的音乐形成的基线和声预期在“现在”的音乐中被打破，从而产生偏好。然后，一旦“现在”的音乐为“未来”的音乐提供了基线预期，更明显的预期打破——以及随之而来的更高的和声惊喜值——就会与偏好形成相关联。我们将这种现象称为“膨胀惊喜假说”。对这一假说的支持可能会影响对人类大脑中调性感知以及其他统计规律是如何形成的理解。
