IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v11y2020i1d10.1038_s41467-020-16448-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceptual fusion of musical notes by native Amazonians suggests universal representations of musical intervals

Author

Listed:
  • Malinda J. McPherson

    (MIT
    Harvard University
    MIT)

  • Sophia E. Dolan

    (Wellesley College)

  • Alex Durango

    (MIT
    MIT)

  • Tomas Ossandon

    (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
    Schools of Engineering, Medicine and Biological Sciences)

  • Joaquín Valdés

    (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

  • Eduardo A. Undurraga

    (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
    Millennium Nucleus for the Study of the Life Course and Vulnerability (MLIV))

  • Nori Jacoby

    (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics)

  • Ricardo A. Godoy

    (Brandeis University)

  • Josh H. McDermott

    (MIT
    Harvard University
    MIT
    MIT)

Abstract

Music perception is plausibly constrained by universal perceptual mechanisms adapted to natural sounds. Such constraints could arise from our dependence on harmonic frequency spectra for segregating concurrent sounds, but evidence has been circumstantial. We measured the extent to which concurrent musical notes are misperceived as a single sound, testing Westerners as well as native Amazonians with limited exposure to Western music. Both groups were more likely to mistake note combinations related by simple integer ratios as single sounds (‘fusion’). Thus, even with little exposure to Western harmony, acoustic constraints on sound segregation appear to induce perceptual structure on note combinations. However, fusion did not predict aesthetic judgments of intervals in Westerners, or in Amazonians, who were indifferent to consonance/dissonance. The results suggest universal perceptual mechanisms that could help explain cross-cultural regularities in musical systems, but indicate that these mechanisms interact with culture-specific influences to produce musical phenomena such as consonance.

Suggested Citation

  • Malinda J. McPherson & Sophia E. Dolan & Alex Durango & Tomas Ossandon & Joaquín Valdés & Eduardo A. Undurraga & Nori Jacoby & Ricardo A. Godoy & Josh H. McDermott, 2020. "Perceptual fusion of musical notes by native Amazonians suggests universal representations of musical intervals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16448-6
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16448-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16448-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-020-16448-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nori Jacoby & Rainer Polak & Jessica A. Grahn & Daniel J. Cameron & Kyung Myun Lee & Ricardo Godoy & Eduardo A. Undurraga & Tomás Huanca & Timon Thalwitzer & Noumouké Doumbia & Daniel Goldberg & Eliza, 2024. "Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 8(5), pages 846-877, May.
    2. Gwangsu Kim & Dong-Kyum Kim & Hawoong Jeong, 2024. "Spontaneous emergence of rudimentary music detectors in deep neural networks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Raja Marjieh & Peter M. C. Harrison & Harin Lee & Fotini Deligiannaki & Nori Jacoby, 2024. "Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-22, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16448-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.