Expecting Parallel Structure: Motivic Perception as Relational Priming

This study investigates how listeners form melodic expectations based on motivic structure, with a particular focus on whether structural parallelism—similarity in rhythm or pitch contour between segments—facilitates expectations for upcoming notes, as measured by a covert timbre discrimination task. Drawing on theories of relational priming and motivic parallelism, we examine whether musical patterns are processed more fluently when a later segment echoes an earlier one in structure, in both tonal and non-tonal musical contexts. Melodic expectancy is known to depend on tonal and temporal context, with fluent processing often attributed to statistical regularities or internalized schemas like tonal hierarchies. An additional explanation appeals to relational priming, where structural similarity between segments supports anticipation via pattern completion (conceived as a process of structural alignment). This study isolates the influence of pitch and rhythmic parallelism on melodic expectancy by holding such statistics and internalized schemas constant across conditions. Participants listen to short piano melodies composed of a stem and a continuation. Continuations vary systematically in pitch and rhythmic parallelism, yielding four conditions: both, neither, rhythm only, and pitch only. On most trials, a probe tone is embedded within the continuation, and participants indicate which of two timbres (oboe or clarinet) are heard. On a subset of trials, no probe is present, and participants provide a pleasantness rating instead, to reduce strategic responding. We expect that structural parallelism in each musical parameter will facilitate the anticipation of future notes, that rhythmic parallelism will provide the strongest predictor of facilitation (owing to the primacy of rhythmic parallelism in motivic perception); that the influence of rhythmic and pitch parallelism interact; and that these influences may be moderated by the presence of tonal structure. If pitch and rhythmic parallelism effects interact, and if their effects depend upon tonal context, this would support a pattern-matching account of melodic expectation that integrates across parameters and is scaffolded by schematic knowledge of musical structure. Moreover, observing such effects across tonal and non-tonal contexts would point to the generalizability of the mechanism of relational priming during melodic perception.