OCTAVE EQUIVALENCE AS MEASURED BY SIMILARITY RATINGS

Octave equivalence refers to the musical equivalence of notes separated by 1 or more octaves; such notes are assigned the same name in the musical scale. Octave equivalence may be incorporated into subjects'' similarity ratings of pairs of tones or tone sequences. In the 1st experiment, subjects on each trial rated the similarity of 2 successively presented tones. The results failed to show evidence of octave equivalence. In subsequent experiments, the range of frequency values presented and the musical context were manipulated. Evidence of octave equivalence was found only when the range of tone height differences presented was small; the effect of musical context was negligible. The implications of these results for theories of music perception and recognition are discussed.